Irish Hospitals' Sweepstake - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Irish Hospitals' Sweepstake was a lottery established in the Irish Free State

Irish Free State

The Irish Free State was the state established as a Dominion on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed by the British government and Irish representatives exactly twelve months beforehand...

in 1930 as the Irish Free State Hospitals' Sweepstake to finance hospital

Hospital

A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....

s, and is often referred to as the Irish Sweepstake. The Public Charitable Hospitals (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1930 was the act that established the lottery; as this act expired in 1934, in accordance with its terms, the Public Hospitals Acts were the legislative basis for the scheme thereafter. The main organisers were Richard Duggan, Captain Spencer Freeman and Joe McGrath

Joseph McGrath (politician)

Joseph McGrath was an Irish politician and businessman. He was a Sinn Féin and later a Cumann na nGaedheal Teachta Dála for various constituencies in Dublin and County Mayo and developed widespread business interests.-Political career:McGrath was born in Dublin in 1887...

. Duggan was a well known Dublin bookmaker

Bookmaker

A bookmaker, or bookie, is an organization or a person that takes bets on sporting and other events at agreed upon odds.- Range of events :...

who had organised a number of sweepstakes in the decade prior to setting up the Hospitals' Sweepstake. Captain Freeman was a Welsh

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

-born engineer and former captain in the British Army. After the Constitution of Ireland

Constitution of Ireland

The Constitution of Ireland is the fundamental law of the Irish state. The constitution falls broadly within the liberal democratic tradition. It establishes an independent state based on a system of representative democracy and guarantees certain fundamental rights, along with a popularly elected...

was enacted in 1937 the name Irish Hospitals' Sweepstake was adopted.

History

The sweepstake was established because there was a need for investment in hospitals and medical services and the public finances were unable to meet this expense at the time. As the population of Ireland was unable to raise sufficient funds, because of its low population, a significant amount of the funds were raised in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

and United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

; often among the emigrant Irish populations. The winner was determined based on the outcome of several horse races; amongst them, the Cambridgeshire

Newmarket Racecourse

The town of Newmarket, in Suffolk, England, is the headquarters of British horseracing, home to the largest cluster of training yards in the country and many key horse racing organisations. Newmarket Racecourse has two courses - the Rowley Mile Course and the July Course. Both are wide, galloping...

, Derby

Epsom Derby

The Derby Stakes, popularly known as The Derby, internationally as the Epsom Derby, and under its present sponsor as the Investec Derby, is a Group 1 flat horse race in Great Britain open to three-year-old thoroughbred colts and fillies...

and Grand National

Grand National

The Grand National is a world-famous National Hunt horse race which is held annually at Aintree Racecourse, near Liverpool, England. It is a handicap chase run over a distance of four miles and 856 yards , with horses jumping thirty fences over two circuits of Aintree's National Course...

.

The original sweepstake draws were held at The Mansion House

Mansion House, Dublin

The Mansion House on Dawson Street, Dublin, is the official residence of the Lord Mayor of Dublin since 1715.-Features:The Mansion House's most famous features include the "Round Room", where the First Dáil assembled on 21 January 1919 to proclaim the Irish Declaration of Independence...

, Dublin on May 19th 1939 under the supervision of the Chief Commissioner of Police, and were moved to the more permanent fixture at the Royal Dublin Society

Royal Dublin Society

The Royal Dublin Society was founded on 25 June 1731 to "to promote and develop agriculture, arts, industry, and science in Ireland". The RDS is synonymous with its main premises in Ballsbridge in Dublin, Ireland...

(RDS) in Ballsbridge

Ballsbridge

Ballsbridge is a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, named for the bridge spanning the River Dodder on the south side of the city. The sign on the bridge still proclaims it as "Ball's Bridge" in recognition of the fact that the original bridge in this location was built and owned by a Mr...

later in 1940.

The Adelaide Hospital

Adelaide Hospital

The Adelaide Hospital was a general and teaching hospital in Dublin, Ireland until it became part of the new Tallaght Hospital in 1998.-History:...

in Dublin was the only hospital at the time not to accept money from the Hospitals Trust, as the governors disapproved of sweepstakes.

At the time of its inception, lotteries were generally illegal in the United Kingdom and U.S.A. The sweepstakes became very popular in the absence of other readily available lotteries. Even though tickets were illegal outside of Ireland, millions were sold in the U.S. and Great Britain where most of the winners came from. How many of these tickets failed to make it back for the drawing is unknown. The United States Customs Service alone confiscated and destroyed several million counterfoils from shipments being returned to Ireland.

In the United Kingdom the sweepstakes caused some strain in Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until...

relations, the Betting and Lotteries Act 1934 was passed by the parliament of the United Kingdom in order to prevent export and import of lottery related materials. The United States Congress

United States Congress

The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

had outlawed the use of the U.S. Postal Service

United States Postal Service

The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...

for lottery purposes in 1890. However, a thriving black market sprang up for tickets in both jurisdictions. As governments relaxed their attitudes towards this form of gambling

Gambling

Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods...

, and indeed went into the lottery business themselves, the sweepstakes declined in popularity.

From the 1960s onwards, declining revenues became a reality for the sweepstake. Although giving the appearance of a public charitable lottery, with nurses featured prominently in the advertising and drawings, it was in fact a private for-profit lottery company, and the owners were paid substantial dividends from the profits. Fortune Magazine described it as "a private company run for profit and its handful of stockholders have used their earnings from the sweepstakes to build a group of industrial enterprises that loom quite large in the modest Irish economy. Waterford Glass

Waterford Crystal

Waterford Crystal is a trademark brand of crystal glassware, previously produced in Waterford, Ireland, though the factory there was shut down after the receivership of Waterford Wedgwood plc in early 2009...

, Irish Glass Bottle Company and many other new Irish companies were financed by money from this enterprise and up to 5,000 people were given jobs." By his death in 1966, Joe McGrath

Joseph McGrath (politician)

had interests in the racing industry, and held the Renault

Renault

Renault S.A. is a French automaker producing cars, vans, and in the past, autorail vehicles, trucks, tractors, vans and also buses/coaches. Its alliance with Nissan makes it the world's third largest automaker...

dealership for Ireland besides large financial and property assets. He was known throughout Ireland for his tough business attitude but also by his generous spirit. At that time Ireland was still one of the poorer countries in Europe; he believed in investment in Ireland. His home, Cabinteely House, was donated to the state in 1986 and is now unoccupied but is held by the Office of Public Works.

In 1986, the Irish government created a new public lottery

National Lottery (Ireland)

The National Lottery is the state lottery of Ireland. It was founded when the Oireachtas passed the to support initiatives in the areas of sport and recreation, health and welfare, national heritage and the arts, and the Irish language. Since gaming operations began on 23 March 1987, over €3.6...

, and the company failed to secure the new contract to manage it. The final sweepstake was held in January 1986 and the company was unsuccessful for a licence bid for the Irish National Lottery, which was won by An Post

An Post

An Post is the State-owned provider of postal services in the Republic of Ireland. An Post provides a universal postal service to all parts of the country as a member of the Universal Postal Union...

later that year. The company went into voluntary liquidation in March 1987. The majority of workers did not have a pension plan but the sweepstake had fed many families during lean times and was regarded as a safe job. The Public Hospitals (Amendment) Act, 1990 was enacted for the orderly winding up of the scheme, which had by then almost £

Irish pound

The Irish pound was the currency of Ireland until 2002. Its ISO 4217 code was IEP, and the usual notation was the prefix £...

500,000 in unclaimed prizes and accrued interest.

In North America

The lottery was very popular in the United States and Canada at a time when most other forms of gambling (beyond horse racing or bingo) were still unlawful in the majority of states and provinces. The lottery was known as the Irish Sweepstakes or the Irish Sweeps. Robert Heinlein mentions it in his novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

, Glory Road
Glory Road
Glory Road is a fantasy novel by Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and published in hardcover later the same year...

, and in his novella

Novella

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

, The Man Who Sold the Moon
The Man Who Sold the Moon
The Man Who Sold the Moon is a science fiction novella by Robert A. Heinlein written in 1949 and published in 1950. A part of his Future History and prequel to "Requiem", it covers events around a fictional first Moon landing, in 1978, and the schemes of Delos D...

.

Photographs

Photographs taken in 1939 of the Irish Sweepstake Building, Ballsbridge, Dublin; from the collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects:

History

In North America

Photographs

Further reading