Eighteenth-century England has been described as witnessing a ‘rage for gambling’. This notion, however, offers very little in respect of either characterizing or explaining gambling in its various forms in this period. Instead, this chapter uses, amongst other things, modern gambling theory as developed by social psychologists as part of an attempt to begin to reframe our understanding of gambling and its various meanings in British society in the long eighteenth century. Particular attention is devoted to attitudes towards chance, social mobility, and the highly gendered nature of much gambling. Gambling is represented here in terms of the intimate and multiple connections between it and major currents and developments in British society; indeed, gambling in this as in any other period needs to be understood primarily in the context of the social and cultural values and settings which shaped its significance.

One of the most striking developments of this period was the rise and success of the official lottery, first staged in 1694. Prior to its abolition in 1823 – the last official lottery was held in 1826 – the lottery represented state-sanctioned gambling, as well spawning a whole host of derivative gambling activities. This chapter explains the operations of the lottery, in particular the markets for lottery tickets as they developed very rapidly from the 1690s, and grew to encompass the whole of Britain, penetrating deep down into as well as across British society. It emphasizes how far the early development of the lottery marketplace was enfolded within the contemporaneous financial revolution. From early on, however, it also owed much to widely diffused entrepreneurial spirit and energies, in particular those of the lottery office keepers and their proliferating agents. The lottery was thus another facet of the accelerating commercialization of British society in this period, as well as a leading exploiter of the new power of publicity unleashed by a relatively free and ebullient print industry. From newspapers to hastily printed single-sheet handbills, publicity was key to stoking contemporary interest in and demand for the lottery and its various derivatives.

This conclusion reviews changing practices and habits of gambling in Britain in the long eighteenth century, among different groups in society, and among women and men. The rise in female gambling of different kinds was one of the most striking developments of this period, attracting significant comment from the contemporary press and writers, as well as anxiety from authors of the myriad conduct books of the period. The implications of these changes and of the prevalence of different forms of gambling for our understanding of Britain in this period is examined, in particular in relation to debates among historians about the impact and influence of polite values and culture. The final section of the conclusion looks briefly ahead to the new worlds of gambling as they began to develop in the opening decades of the nineteenth century.

This chapter examines an apparent paradox, the existence and further development of significant body of laws prohibiting different forms of gambling and gambling in certain places, and their overwhelming inefficacy. The law provides, nevertheless, a very useful prism through which to plot changing and fluctuating attitudes towards gambling among the authorities and politically powerful, and, indeed, rather lower down in society. The heart of this chapter is an analysis of successive drives to clamp down on gaming houses in London and their fairly negligible impact viewed in the longer term. This is partly a story of the resourcefulness and resources of the gaming house keepers, and their ability to evade or blunt the effects of law and magisterial campaigns to enforce the law. But it is also a story of how ineffective the law and contemporary forms of policing were when faced with an extensive, well-embedded and well-capitalized gambling industry, often supported by or at least tolerated by local communities. This is quite apart from the flagrant double standards which were entertained by the state and Parliament towards gambling.

The focus of this chapter is the gambling of the elites and primarily gambling for large financial stakes, so-called playing deep. It seeks to provide a picture of how far gambling of different kinds was firmly integrated in the lives of many among the elites, and how the landscape of elite gambling changed across the eighteenth century. However, it also emphasizes the tensions and even contradictions which existed in elite attitudes towards ‘gaming’ and the influence of different milieu on the propensity to gamble and nature of gambling. At its core are a series of case studies of individual gamblers and specific gambling coteries, including a detailed examination of a case of a junior member of a leading Scottish titled family, Lord William Murray of the Murrays of Atholl, for whom gaming was very destructive personally. Gambling, it is often emphasized, was frequently an enactment of the code of honour of the gentleman; but at stake were different, competing versions of honour and masculinity. Gambling divided as much as it united the elites, in terms of habits, conduct, and attitudes.

This chapter seeks to establish who adventured in the lottery, on what sorts of scale, and how regularly. It moves beyond purely impressionistic comment and evidence, and goes in search of systematic records for participation in the official lotteries. It underlines the sheer social and geographical extent of participation in the lottery, which developed first and most intensively in London and its environs, but which quickly spread far beyond the capital and its extensive shadow. The second half examines the motivations of those who undertook lottery adventures, focusing on attitudes towards ‘fortune’ or luck, and the extent to which the lottery served to exemplify and amplify the social solvent which was money, but also engage very widely entertained hopes for independence and social mobility present in British society in this period. Men, women, and children, from all social backgrounds, were susceptible to the allure of the lottery and the possibility of winning one of the capital prizes in the draw, even if some among the upper and middling ranks sought to distance themselves from such entrapments at the same time that they entertained them.

This chapter goes in search of the gambling habits and propensities of the bulk of the population, but does so by focusing in the first place on the gambling of the lower orders and many among the middling sorts in the giant British capital. Through examination of a range of activities, including cricket and lottery insurance, and different gambling locales, it seeks to map the sheer extent and diversity of gambling at this level of society in eighteenth-century London. If London in this period was a ‘gambler’s paradise’, as one historian has claimed, then this was about much more than its exclusive gambling clubs. The final section of the chapter focuses on one activity which became very closely identified with betting in the later Georgian era, and across Britain – pedestrianism, or foot-racing. Through exploring the development and appeal of this sport, it seeks to plot a path forwards from the eighteenth century into the world of early to mid nineteenth century popular sport and betting, in which the centre of gravity moved decisively away from London and to the rapidly growing industrial regions and towns of north and midlands, as well as the manufacturing regions of lowland Scotland.