'A Terrible Danger to the Morals of the Country': The Irish Hospitals' Sweepstake in Great Britain 1930-87

Abstract:The principal focus of this paper is to examine the importance of British contributions to the success of the Irish hospitals' sweepstake. In its early years, up to three quarters of Irish sweepstake tickets were sold in Britain, bringing millions of pounds into Ireland annually for expenditure on improving the state's hospital services. The vast amount of money leaving Britain in this way angered the British government and forced them to introduce new legislation to curtail the activities of the sweep. The paper will highlight the extent to which the success of the Irish sweepstake depended on the market for tickets in Britain; the danger posed to the survival of the sweep by the restriction of its activities in Britain after 1935; the role of the sweepstake controversy in further exacerbating already strained relations between the governments of Great Britain and the Irish Free State in the 1930s; how the success of the sweep in Britain raised the issue of legalising a British lottery; and the eventual decline of the Irish sweepstake as a force in British gambling circles in the post-war years.