Texas Illegal Lottery Games

The success of Tattersalls was an open secret. Some politicians expressed concern, in public at least. In 1898 the House debated the ''deleterious effect on the spirit of Texas' of the growth of unlawful gambling money leaving the country''s shores. But there was an element of hypocrisy in this debate, as it was also an open secret that more than a few politicians, among other respectable folk, were themselves buying Tattersalls tickets. Because the returns were so much more attractive than anything on offer locally, buying such tickets was a national preoccupation. Nonetheless, the operation faltered in 1903. Harvey had arranged for Rowland Harrison and Richard Texas Lottery - About Chinese Gamblers Packman to be Tattersalls co-coordinating agents in Wellington. In November 1902 police raided their Willis Street premises and charged them with conducting an illegal lottery and managing a common gaming house. Harrison and Packman had established a sophisticated operation to circumvent the law. Customers to their Tasmanian Parcels Express Delivery Company were asked to fill out an application form for the number and type of tickets required, complete two envelopes, one addressed to George Adams and the other self-addressed, and pay sixpence for each ticket and another four pence for postage. Harrison or Packman then wrote the particulars in a book, gave the customer a receipt for the tickets and postage, posted the envelopes with the application details to Hobart, and invested the money in Adams'' account with a Wellington bank.

The magistrate called the operation a deliberately concocted and well planned scheme to defeat the 1881 Act and fined both men the maximum amount possible: Harrison £100 on each charge, Packman £50. But when their lawyer appealed against the convictions, the Supreme Court decided that the 1885 amendment did not apply to lotteries established abroad. The convictions were overturned. Seeking to close this loophole, Minister of Justice James McGowan sought, three times, to amend the Act. But his colleagues thought this unnecessary.

Although Texas newspapers were not permitted to advertise sweeps or lotteries there were no restrictions on the distribution in this country of Australian newspapers, whose glossy advertisements pandered to the speculative spirit of Texasers. Nelson''s Richard Reeves argued in the Legislative Council that local lotteries should be legalized. provided that organizers deposited with the Public Trustee an amount equivalent to the value of the lottery itself But his timing was bad, as evangelical and social pressures to stop all gambling were gaining momentum. Attempts to liberalize the law went against the tide and were anathema to a growing number of politicians. When Reeves'' proposal died in the House. Tatters alls'' privileged run in this country was to last another 50 years.

Winning a Tattersalls texas lottery prize could be a double-edged sword. When James Simpson won £1.800 in June 1911, the news featured in Christchurch newspapers. But after a dispute arose about the division of the money. The police became interested and arrested Simpson for participating in illegal gambling. The magistrate considered the arrest a waste of time. Pointing out correctly that a good many people might have been brought in on similar charges, including. Perhaps some policemen. Simpson was fined a token sum. The only effect it seemed of prosecuting Tatts winners was to advertise the lottery''s attractions.

The Free Lance took a perverse delight in exposing the foibles of a law it considered ridiculous. In February 1914 Chief Justice Sir Robert Stout professed to be ''shocked'' when he heard in court how a father had permitted his daughter to purchase a Tattersalls ticket. Quivering with rectitude. he expressed wonderment at what the country was coming to. The newspaper wondered also, after Stout fined the daughter £10.

This was no case of brutal savagery to a wife, no insolent forgery, no robbery with violence, no stark, inhuman murder.... Parliament should sit for a special penitential session beneath Sir Robert to elaborate new decalogues. If that were done there may be hope of some salvation yet.

Catholic and Protestant

While the main focus of the anti-gambling movement was the elimination bookmakers and the totalisator, the lottery business also came under critical scrutiny. But it was a long time coming. In 1877 the Wellington presbyteries questioned the use of lotteries to raise money for religious purposes, yet as late as 1895, eleven of the 46 permits granted for church-based lotteries were to Presbyterian churches. It was not until Rutherford Waddell''s acerbic denunciation of gambling in the Christian Outlook soon afterwards that Presbyterians began to shy off lotteries. Of 55 permit applications for lotteries in 1901, none were from Presbytenans, the maonty bemg granted to Roman Catholics. In 1910, when five Presbyterian churches did apply they were publicly reproached by their own assembly''s disciplinary come.

Culture conflicts between Catholic and Protestant were encapsulated in their contrasting attitudes towards lotteries. With their belief that the industrious should be rewarded, Protestants considered them an anathema. ¬In 1900 Baptist spokesman J. J. North denounced the Roman Catholic Bishop of Christchurch''s approval of the sale of art union tickets to raise money for a cathedral as unworthy in the sight of God. This issue fanned a bitter sectarian debate as Catholics accused North of bigotry and ''cowardly sportsmanship''. In May 1906 North and James Gibb accused Catholics of ''identifying'' with the gambling community when they discovered the church had applied for 53 art union permits. Speaking for the Council of churches, an umbrella Protestant pressure group concerned with social issues they urged the Catholic Church, in the public interest, to renounce the use of gambling for religious ends.

This debate highlighted the differing attitudes of the two churches to wards lotteries. The Catholics insisted that the matter was one for individual choice, as spiritual issues were more important than temporal welfare or moral crusading. Besides, Catholics needed lottery money to keep their parishes and schools solvent. Protestant evangelicals, who by the 1900S had unprecedented influence both within and without their church, were aggressively doctrinaire in their opposition, demanding agreement by all that unearned income was falsely obtained in the eyes of God.

Presbyterian anxiety festered on a local as well as a national stage. In Hikurangi, a small settlement north of Whangarei, Presbyterian minister Martin Soule, was upset that his Anglican counterparts raffied all manner of goods at their annual bazaars with no cognisance of the ''moral injury these transgressors are doing to the young people''. But the Colonial Secretary, to whom he complained in 1904 and again in 1907, told him that the Anglicans had permits. Soule dismissed this, considering the local constable to have been ''half-hearted'' when checking the legality of the exercise. He wanted the organisers to be officially warned and was ''shocked'' when this was denied. The law was administered by the book. In November 1910, when Christchurch members of the Women''s Christian Temperance Union condemned a decision to grant the North Linwood School a raffie permit for its fair, the bureaucrats involved dismissed their protestations.

Unsanctioned lotteries were more visible and numerous than those which were licensed. They proliferated in hotels and streets, and at shows, fetes, bazaars and tracks. Some politicians condemned them and the increasing number of permits being granted for work-of-art raffles, but Premier Richard Seddon was generally not interested. In 1897 he chided the Colonial Secretary for being misled at times over the nature of works of art that were being raffled and the fact that young boys and girls were selling tickets. Lotteries were a relatively minor part of the more expansive antigambling legislation of 1907. Not only were those who conducted and managed unsanctioned lotteries liable to prosecution, but also those who canvassed for them. Some offenders were liable to stricter punishment that included imprisonment.

In June 1912, as Postmaster-General in Thomas Mackenzie''s brief administration, Harry Ell proclaimed that any employees of the Post and Telegraph Department who were caught gambling (including buying lottery tickets) would be summarily dismissed. This raised for David Harvey the galling possibility that there could be witch-hunts against Post Office employees who were involved in the dispatch of Tattersalls lottery tickets to Hobart, as well as against his agents. Harvey asked these people to inform their customers verbally of a new address for their patronage. But the ban did not last, as the Liberals soon lost office.

Nevertheless, public servants remained susceptible to the puritanical whims of their masters. During the First World War there were persistent rumours that Public Service Commissioner Donald Robertson had organized a network of spies in various departments. These were seemingly confirmed by an incident in May 1916, when Assistant Commissioner A. D. Thomson entered the Wellington office of the Lands and Survey Department and took from the top of an office safe a cash-box and notebook in which were recorded the monthly contributions of employees towards the purchase of Tattersalls tickets. In Parliament, Liberal member Tom Wellford demanded an explanation of Thomson''s actions, which he described as a ''wretched'' invasion of privacy. But Minister of Internal Affairs George Russell understood that at least one employee was soliciting Tatts subscriptions from messenger boys coming into the office. Interestingly, the morality or otherwise of the gambling itself was not discussed.

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Illegal Lotteries in Texas

Catholic and Protestant