Joynson-Hicks Says No

Despite the palpable need for charity fundraising after World War One in order to help support old soldiers, hospitals and families on a low income; the gambling aspect had not been legalised. A decade after the end of the war, the debate rumbled on. 

The Home Secretary in 1928 was the Conservative MP William Joynson-Hicks - known to be uptight, pious and prudish. Newspapers and Hansard report on various run-ins between Joynson-Hicks and other MPs who were frustrated at the issue of lucrative charity lotteries and tombolas leading to prosecutions. Even worse, some fundraisers were broken up by the police and prosecuted, while others seemed to fall under the radar. A particular point of discussion that year concerned two events in Brighton. On 4th July of that year, Sir Cooper Rawson, MP for the constituency, asked the Home Secretary 

"...why a voluntarily organised draw on behalf of the funds of a Hove hospital was stopped by the Home Office whilst draws conducted on identical lines for other hospitals in Brighton and Hove have not been interfered with..."

Joynson-Hicks responded:

"The enforcement of the law relating to illegal lotteries is a matter for the local police and not for the Home Office. My attention was drawn to a public lottery at Hove in apparent contravention of the law, and I brought it to the notice of the local police. Had my attention been drawn to the other lotteries referred to, it would have been my duty to bring them also to the notice of the police. As I stated in reply to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Dulwich Division of Camberwell (Sir F. Hall) on the 14th instant, public lotteries are definitely illegal, and the law does not discriminate between those promoted in aid of charity and other public lotteries. I have no authority to decide what is or is not a public lottery, but it is always open to the promoters of charities to consult the local police on the question whether any proposed lottery appears to contravene the law." [Hansard]

He even reported charity lotteries to the police himself then, the old spoil sport! Throughout the year, Joynson-Hicks responded to several queries as to why charities were being deprived of so much money, and why people with good intentions were being embroiled with the police. Always, he stood firm and repeated his mantra, that it was the law and that was that. 

In July, A.C.N. Dixey, Conservative MP for Cockermouth put forward a bill to legalise raffles and lotteries - obviously to no avail. He stated what a majority of people seemed to be feeling - that the situation was indefensible - that lotteries for charities were taking place and often under the auspices of prominent members of the community - but when the police got wind of it, that was that. Obviously,  Britain was still being run by the old guard, the upper class and the clergy who sought to deprive the rest of us of the smallest of pleasures in case it corrupted our souls.

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