4 of £20,000! 2 of £10,000!

Handbill or flyer promoting the sale of state lottery tickets by the stockbroking firm of T. Bish. This firm were licensed to sell state lottery tickets from their offices at 4 Cornhill & 9 Charing Cross. The flyer, published by Gye and Balne, notes that only 10,400 tickets were for sale in current lottery that included four prizes of £20,000 and two of £10,000.

State lotteries were introduced in the 1690s to underwrite government loans and fund public projects including wars. The drawing of winning lottery tickets took place in the City of London initially at the Guildhall and, from 1803, outside Cooper's Hall in front of large, excited crowds, the two lottery wheels heavily guarded by constables and soldiers. By the early 19th century the authorities were concerned by the purchase of shared tickets by the lower, less respectable classes. In 1798, for example, the £20,000 jackpot was shared between a woman servant from Holborn, a woman keeper of a fruit stall in Gray's Inn Lane, a servant of the Duke of Roxburghe and a Covent Garden vegetable carrier. In 1808, a report concluded that because of lotteries, 'idleness, dissipation and poverty are increased, domestic comfort is destroyed, madness often created; crimes, subjecting the perpetrators of them to the punishment of death, are committed, and even suicide itself is produced'. As Lottery companies competed for customers with more rigorous advertising through flyers such as this example the selling of tickets and the lottery draw became increasingly mishandled and corrupt finally resulting in the abolition of the lottery in 1826.