Business and money

Interviewer: In the 1760s the port town of Wexcombe paid for its first bridge with a lottery rather than a tax. Why? Clemency Hart: The obvious answer is that a tax would have caused a riot, and the council minutes do mention that fear. But the bridge had been proposed three times before, and what sank it each time wasn't anger at the idea of paying. It was a deep suspicion that the money would find its way into the councillors' own pockets. A lottery was public. The draw was held on the quayside, the numbers were read aloud and the winners were printed in the newspaper. People could watch the money move. Interviewer: And who bought the tickets? Clemency Hart: I'd assumed it would be the poor, dreaming of a fortune. The ticket registers suggest otherwise. A whole ticket cost more than a labourer earned in a fortnight, so most were bought in shares, by a club of dockers, a church choir, the servants of one large house. What they were buying, I've come to think, was less a chance of winning than a stake in the bridge. When the choir drew a prize, it gave the lot towards building the toll-keeper's cottage.