UNREMEMBERED

The Jamestown Lottery

Posted on January 13, 2016 Updated on January 13, 2016

America’s first lottery winner was a London tailor. His name was Thomas Sharplisse. We know this rather trivial historical fact thanks to a man named John Stow who decided to chronicle English life in in the 16th century. His book Survey of London was released in 1598, a life’s work indeed, since he was dead just seven years later at the age of 80. At the start of the 17th century, however, other diarists picked up the slack, commissioned by King James I, and continued to record anecdotes and life experiences of fellow Londoners. The Stow’s Chronicles is the result. And through it, we know the name Thomas Sharplisse.

Sharplisse was certainly a tailor and from London, but had nothing to do with America except as  other Londoners did at the time a passing interest in what was going on overseas.  It was after all 1612. The stock holding Virginia Company of London, had funded the first English colony in North America, the struggling James Towne, or more commonly known as Jamestown, named of course in honor of his majesty.

The newly established settlement (actually it was the second incarnation, the first was James Fort) was reeling from sickness, starvation  and occasional attacks by hostile Indians. They were in desperate need for more supplies, but the Virginia Company was broke. So the King approved a lottery, a game of chance really, but also an opportunity for fellow countryman to invest at a time when charitable contributions didn’t exist.

Marketing for the lottery was in the guise of a song:

To London, worthy Gentlelmen,

goe venture there your chaunce:

good lucke standes now in readinesse,

your fortunes to advance 

In June of 1612, Sharplisse was among the jostling crowds that gathered in a specially constructed “Lotterie house” near St. Paul’s Church in London to watch tickets drawn in the first Great Standing Lottery. The person who pulled the tickets – in some cases, a child, whose innocence was visible proof of the fairness of the game – dipped his arm into the first drum. Then the second drum was opened and a corresponding slip either a blank or a prize was pulled out. In the words of one contemporary account, the scene was viewed by a gathering of “Knights and esquires, accompanied with sundry grave discreet citizens.” Then the second drum was opened and a corresponding slip either a blank or a prize was pulled out.

Little else is known about Sharplisse except that he spent two-shillings-and-sixpence on a chance. And according to Stow’s Chronicles, Shaprlisse’s ticket  was the Grand Prize winner – four thousand crowns in “fayre plate, which was sent to his house in a very stately manner.” It was a fortune at the time. Two Anglican churches took home smaller winnings

After the Virginia Company paid for the prizes, salesman, managers, and other expenses, the remaining revenue covered the cost of shipping people and supplies to Jamestown. It was such a vital resource that Captain John Smith referred to the lottery as “the real and substantial food.” Disappointing, however, was the turn out. Nearly 60-thousand lottery tickets went unsold. Eventually, the crown banned lotteries that benefited Jamestown because of complaints that they were robbing England of money.

More than a century later, citizens of the Thirteen Colonies used lotteries to fund the American Revolutionary War.

(compiled by Ken Zurski. Some text was reprinted from The Lottery Wars: Long Odds, Fast Money, and the Battle Over an American Institution).