Book contents
- Money and Irish Catholicism
- Money and Irish Catholicism
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Paying and Praying
- 2 Hatching, Matching, and Dispatching
- 3 Counting the Pennies
- 4 Showing, Telling, and Not Telling
- 5 Gambling for God
- 6 Jolly Begging
- Conclusion
- Select Bibliography
- Index
5 - Gambling for God
Lotteries, Raffles, and Prize Draws
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 February 2025
- Money and Irish Catholicism
- Money and Irish Catholicism
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Paying and Praying
- 2 Hatching, Matching, and Dispatching
- 3 Counting the Pennies
- 4 Showing, Telling, and Not Telling
- 5 Gambling for God
- 6 Jolly Begging
- Conclusion
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter explores the emergence, from the 1860s, of lotteries as a crucial fundraising tool for the Irish Catholic Church, one especially used to acquire capital to construct its rapidly growing built infrastructure. The chapter establishes the scale of the ‘drawings of prizes’ phenomenon, before arguing that lotteries worked effectively as a fundraising mechanism because they facilitated broad class engagement among the laity at home and held transnational appeal to the diaspora and non-Catholics alike. This chapter finally traces the roles of sectarian tensions, social and economic change, and legal limits in the gradual decline of such lotteries by the 1910s.
Keywords
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- Information
- Money and Irish CatholicismAn Intimate History, 1850–1921, pp. 166 - 203Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025