The 1782 Gaming Bill and Lottery Regulation Acts (1782 and 1787): Gambling and the law in later Georgian Britain
October 2021
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Journal article
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Parliamentary History
This article brings forward new evidence regarding the circumstances surrounding the origins and authorship of the Gaming Bill of 1782, which was designed to suppress the roulette-type game of ‘Even and Odd’. Hitherto, this Bill has presented something of a puzzle, not only in terms of why it was proposed, but its strange fate; it was never signed into law. The Gaming Bill is viewed alongside a parallel series of parliamentary measures from the 1780s aimed at regulating more tightly the official lottery and derivatives thereof, including, most controversially, lottery insurance, one aspect of which was betting on the outcomes of the lottery draw. By placing these initiatives within a single analytical frame, much can be learnt about the role of parliament and the law in regulating gambling in this period, but also the profound limits of the law in this sphere.
Fantasy, speculation and the British state lottery in the eighteenth century
February 2019
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Chapter
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Revisiting The Polite and Commercial People: Essays in Georgian Politics, Society, and Culture in Honour of Professor Paul Langford
Lottery adventuring in Britain, c.1710-1760
May 2018
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Journal article
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English Historical Review
The state lottery in eighteenth-century Britain was mostly a striking success, bringing in ready money to the Treasury, supporting public borrowing, and rapidly attracting a wide spectrum of investors—or ‘adventurers’, as they were known. This article explores the reasons behind this success, but also seeks to understand the character and nature of lottery adventuring. To this end, it exploits various pieces of data about lottery ticket purchasers, focusing firstly on the Queen Anne lotteries of 1710–14, and then several lotteries from the early Hanoverian period. Lotteries were often portrayed simply as symptoms of a supposed contemporary ‘gambling mania’. This article presents a more complicated picture of a lottery marketplace that was driven by both rational calculation and fantasy.
Was there a Scottish 'urban renaissance' ?
April 2018
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Chapter
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The English Urban Renaissance Revisited
Scots burghs, ‘privilege’ and the Court of Session in the eighteenth century
October 2016
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Journal article
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Urban History
A striking feature of the history of the Scots burgh in this period, and of bodies within it, was their readiness to resort to legal redress in the Court of Session, Scotland's leading civil court. The law was a regular and often intrusive presence in burgh life, a means by which burghs, guildries and trades incorporations defended their privileges. This article will explore this propensity in relation to what it can tell us both about urban identity and the constitution of urban community in this period, but it will also begin to examine the role which the law may have played in the re-constitution and re-shaping of urban community. In other words, it will consider the law and judgments made in the Court of Session as active forces in a wider process of governance. We know relatively little, in fact, about this dimension of urban governance, but the surviving record is a rich one and demands much more systematic examination.
A Tale of Three Cities: The Life and Times of Lord Daer 1763-1794
October 2015
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Book
Scottish Town in the Age of the Enlightenment 1740-1820
July 2014
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Book
This heavily illustrated and innovative study is founded upon personal documents, town council minutes, legal cases, inventories, travellers’ tales, plans and drawings relating to some 30 Scots burghs of the Georgian period.
Social Science
Landowners and Urban Society in Eighteenth-Century Scotland
October 2013
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Journal article
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The Scottish Historical Review
This paper is a product of an AHRC-funded project on Scottish towns and urban society in the age of the enlightenment (A/E000752X12, ‘Scottish towns and urban society in the enlightenment, c.1745–1820’). The author is grateful to the AHRC for their very generous financial assistance. He would like to thank his collaborators on the project, Professors Christopher A. Whatley and Charles McKean, and the anonymous referees for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Lord Daer, radicalism, union and the Enlightenment in the 1790s
February 2013
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Chapter
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Cultures of Radicalism in Britain and Ireland
This collection of essays addresses the role of literature in radical politics. Topics covered include the legacy of Robert Burns, broadside literature in Munster and radical literature in Wales.
The Enlightenment, Towns and Urban Society in Scotland, c.1760-1820
October 2011
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Journal article
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The English Historical Review
Based on analysis of a sample of around twenty towns of different size and character, and distributed across the country, this article examines the role and place of enlightenment in the provincial Scottish town during the later Georgian period...
Towards a British Political Economy: an Eighteenth Century Scottish Perspective
June 2011
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Chapter
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Regulating the British Economy, 1660-1850
Business & Economics
Cultural Change in Provincial Scottish Towns, c.1700-1820
March 2011
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Journal article
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Historical Journal
In the decades which immediately followed the union of 1707, most Scottish towns saw limited economic and cultural change. The middle of the eighteenth century, however, marked the beginnings of a new provincial urban dynamism in Scotland, which, from the 1780s or so onwards, was accompanied by far-reaching and rapid cultural change. This article seeks first to establish the scope, nature, and geography of this cultural transformation before discussing its wider historical significance, not only for our view of modern Scottish urbanization but in terms of patterns of urban change within the British Isles in the long eighteenth century. It is a story in part of convergence on Anglo-British cultural norms, but more saliently of the emergence of an increasingly British cultural synthesis, albeit one with distinctively Scottish elements. Another underlying purpose of the article is to re-direct views of Scottish urbanization away from Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen and on to a group of towns which hitherto have barely featured in discussions of British urbanization in this period.
The Patriot Clubs of the 1750s
November 2010
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Chapter
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Clubs and Societies in Eighteenth-Century Ireland
Clubs and societies emerged as a distinct feature of the Irish social landscape from the end of the 17th Century, and flourished in the 18th Century. The most notable early organization was the Dublin Philosophical Society, founded in the 1680s. But it was merely the first manifestation of a phenomenon that produced a vast array of clubs and societies shaping social, political, and intellectual life in the 18th Century...
The Scottish People and the French Revolution
January 2008
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Book
Presents a study of the political culture of Scotland in the 1790s. This book compares the emergence of 'the people' as a political force, with popular political movements in England and Ireland. It analyses Scottish responses to the French Revolution across the political spectrum; explaining Loyalist as well as Radical opinions and organisations.
History
Scottish-English Connections in British Radicalism in the 1790s
December 2005
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Chapter
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Anglo-Scottish Relations from 1603 to 1900
<p>This chapter discusses the frame for radical co-operation in the age of the Friends of the People and later. The links to radicalism south of the Border have tended to be relegated to the margins of historical debate. Through the agency of Thomas Muir, links with the leading Irish radical society, the United Irishmen, were established at a relatively early stage, although the precise nature of these remains obscure. The emphasis on the Scots-Irish connection reflects the formative affect on Irish presbyterian radicals of an education provided by the Scottish universities. The influence of the English reform movement on the emergence of an organised campaign for parliamentary reform in Scotland in the 1790s has not always been fully appreciated, although it appears to have been a significant one. Correspondence and personal contacts across national boundaries were intermittent; the flow of print, in both ways, was continual. During the 1790s, union was a crucial element of radical strategy and tactics in Britain.</p>
Scotland in the Age of the French Revolution
December 2005
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Book
The essays in this volume, written by scholars working throughout Britain and Ireland, will help to fill this gap.
Scotland
The Scots, the Westminster Parliament, and the British State in the Eighteenth Century
October 2003
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Chapter
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Parliaments, Nations and Identities in Britain and Ireland, 1660-1850
This groundbreaking volume address these questions from a variety of perspectives, showing how the parliaments at Dublin, Edinburgh and, Westminster, were seen and used in very different ways by people from very different communities.
History
Politics and the Nation Britain in the Mid-Eighteenth Century
January 2002
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Book
This book presents a new picture of political life in mid-18th century Britain, a period of history which is poorly understood. It argues that British politics and political culture in this period have often been poorly understood through over-emphasis on political stability. Using a thematic approach, it reconstructs a political world in which vital issues continued to exercise the minds and emotions of those who made up the contemporary ‘political nation’, a group which included far more than the handful of politicians who competed for national political office. The book interprets its subject broadly and tells the stories of politics in the mid-18th century through the words and projects, hopes and fears, of contemporaries. It also represents an important contribution to the difficult, but important, project of writing the history of the British Isles. Developments in Scotland and Ireland are given careful attention along with those of England.
