A Flutter With a Cause

On reading through the annals of charity gambling prosecutions and moralising, it isn't difficult to find a sweeping generalisation should you be in need of one. Back in the 20th century, the nuances were lost on those both for and against charity lotteries. Take the instance of a 1943 court case. Two men connected with a lottery that had been regularly taking place in Staffordshire were fined a total of £45 between them. The pottery worker that had organised the lottery was fined £20, while the licensee of the pub where chances were being sold was fined £25 for allowing his premises to be used in such a way. 140 people were found to have been taking part in the lottery at 6d a time, and the proceeds were going to the Red Cross, local hospital and Prisoner of War Comforts Fund. In summing up, both sides gave an opinion. The defence solicitor said that when lotteries are stopped, charity is the loser. "An Englishman loves a sporting gamble and that's what makes us the natio...

 An extract from my short story Pollywasher: 2. Nancy Next Door “I don’t really believe in gambling do I? I mean, I go with my mum to the bingo to keep her company, just a couple of cards to be sociable. Never win anything, though my mum has had a couple of touches but then the amount she spends she’s bound to. She won’t have got back what she’s spent will she? Barbara though. That was her life, her whole life from what I could tell, never nothing but betting on the horses and on the dogs and the casino. She’s borrowed milk off me that I’ll never see again will I? She used to get all fancied up, don’t know how she afforded that. The feller I suppose. I did take to her though, when I got to know her, you know? We met on the landing and had a chat a couple of times, then she invited me in for a cuppa. Somehow I ended up telling her about all my trouble and about my boy being arrested and she was dead nice about it all. A lot of people, they judge you don’t they? But I could tell she ...

 Normally the words priest and gambling in the same sentence would be all about hellfire and damnation. But this wasn't the case in a report that appeared in the Sheffield Telegraph in January 1953. This report covered the announcement by police in Bradford that they had put a stop to a football pool that had been operated by four Catholic churches in the city. The report also remarks on a similarity to a case in Cheshire where another priest had been running a football pool in aid of Catholic schools. The Bradford problem was described thus: "The pools method of giving members static code numbers with the team changed every week constituted a lottery that had no skill attached." And it wasn't peanuts that were talking about here, one church raised a whopping £700 a week, keeping £200 for the charitable cause. 70 years on, I'd love to be raising that much in a lottery for my little charity!  "The police were very nice about it" said one of the priests, t...