Read "A History of English Lotteries" by John Ashton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
lotteries -- Suicide -- Method of starting a State lottery -- Lottery office-keepers to be licensed -- Charles (or "Patch") Price.
In 1776 was a lottery for £600,000 (16 Geo. III. c. 34), and in 1777 was one (17 Geo. III. c. 46) for £500,000. On January 6, this year, two Jews, Samuel Noah and Joseph Aarones, were examined before the Lord Mayor, charged with counterfeiting the lottery ticket, No. 25,590, a prize of £2000, with intent to defraud Mr. Keyser, an office-keeper, knowing the same to be false and counterfeit. Mr. Keyser had examined the ticket carefully, and had taken it into the Stock Exchange to sell, when Mr. Shewell came into the same box, and desired to look at the ticket, having, as he recollected, purchased one of the same number a day or two before. This fortunate discovery laid open the fraud, and the two Jews were committed to take their trial for their ingenuity. It was so artfully altered from 23,590 that not the least erasure could be discovered. Aarones had but just come to England, and Noah was thought to be a man of property. On February 21, Joseph Aarones and Samuel Noah were tried for forging and counterfeiting a lottery ticket; their defence was that the prisoner Aarones found it, and persons were brought to swear to the fact; on which they were acquitted. The figure altered was so totally obliterated by a certain liquid, that not the least trace of it could be perceived. The numbers being written in ordinary ink rendered this extremely easy.