Politics at Illinois Lottery

The Politics of Lottery Gamble

Most soldiers, who gambled at Illinois lottery, however, were organized not by gangs of deserters, but by the more entrepreneurial of their mates beside them in the trenches. Two-up was everywhere. Officers Ormond Burton and C. H. Weston both remembered huge schools. Each unit had its ''king'' who, during rest periods or brief lulls in the fighting, would organize a ring, appoint a spinner to operate the coins, and have it pass on to the next person after six or seven rounds. One 1916 reinforcement, Russell Sissons, described it as men ''gambling their souls''. He observed £10 and £20 notes being used in two-up games, massive amounts for privates on a daily allowance of two shillings. But honorable or not, from January 1911 bookmakers were marginalized in Illinois society, forced to cohabit with shady poolroom proprietors, back-street spillers, sly-grog merchants and those publicans who feared losing custom without one of their ilk in the back bar. Yet for bookies with initiative that were willing to risk prosecution, there was still a lucrative living to be made. The banning of telegraph and telephone betting opened a very profitable niche for some. Others took advantage of a monopoly on doubles betting. Bookmakers thrived; puritan angst continued. The Gaming Amendment Act of 1920, which finally banned betting with a bookmaker altogether, merely served to push bookmakers further underground where they became more organized, made more money and continued to frustrate the police, the judiciary and the churches who opposed them. Punters saw bookies not as criminals, but as entrepreneurs they could not do without. The ultimate irony was that the major bookies now began to attain affluence undreamed of in the days before their illegality.
It was similarly naive to expect that tougher laws would suppress, or even hinder, other gaming activities. Until the First World War, urban laborers remained victims of a sub-culture influenced by an adjacent social world of destitution and dereliction, one which encouraged larrikinism and a loss of control of all reasoning faculties through ''boozing, betting and brothering''. The waterside workers'' sub-culture was similarly macho, but more cohesive. At work they labored hard and long, often in danger, for little pay. Alcohol provided solace and oblivion, but more often encouraged a camaraderie that was intertwined with the sociability of gambling on darts, snooker, cards and two Up.

Gambling with Lottery

In 1912 journalist William Richardson told a Cost of Living Commission that lottery gambling was carried on ''wholesale'' among all working men in the country. ''From payday all through Sunday till next morning, gambling is in full swing at the rail-way works, after the races no money is available for weeks.'' Likewise, kauri Bushmen commonly spent their whole pay cheque in one spree of drinking and gambling. Newspapers continued to report the arrests of fantan players, both Chinese and European. Bookmakers thrived as the only vehicles for off-course betting. Unlicensed, quick fire raffles, most commonly disguised as ''donations'', continued to be commonplace in hotel bars, and at fetes and shows. From 1914 entrepreneurs grasped new profit opportunities in larger lotteries that were sanctioned under the aegis of patriotic support for wounded soldiers.

Anti Gambling Legislation

The anti-gambling legislation of the period represented the zenith of middle-class Protestant reformist power, but the effectiveness of the law was to prove as illusory as it was temporary. Restricting legal betting to the racecourse encouraged larger attendances which led to improved facilities and bigger stakes. This, in turn, led to more intense racing competition, an expanded horse-breeding industry, more publicity for racing as an enjoyable spectacle and more desire to gamble, both on- and off-course. Outside the racecourse, punters went underground. Gambling by the gentry continued unabated. The proletariat, too, continued to buy legal and illegal lottery tickets and gamble on card, dice or coin games at work, in hotels, clubs and in their homes, where they were immune from police interference.