The 68-days drawing

By Jeroen Puttevils

In a previous post to this blog, James Raven delved into his diaries to narrate the first draw of the new National Lotteries in Britain in November 1994. The event took the form of an hour-long televised spectacle. This is much longer than the televised draws we are used to today; these do not take more than five minutes. Yet, the duration of the 1994 draw pales into insignificance when compared to the lottery draws that took place in the Low Countries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The draws of the lotteries of the Bruges city government in the years 1465-1475 usually took a day to be completed. The lottery of the city government of Leiden in 1504 lasted 7 days and nights. Over 40,000 lots were drawn, roughly 4 per minute. But the lottery of the Amsterdam Dolhuis (Madhouse) set wins the record of longest lottery drawing: 68 days and nights.

What explains these increasingly lengthy performances? Contrary to our current system with numbered balls, the lotteries of the early modern Low Countries were more akin to raffles or tombolas. The tickets were identified by the name of the ticket buyer and/or by a short poem or so-called lottery prose. Each and every of these tickets was drawn from a basket or ton, after which a second ticket was drawn from a second basket containing prize-carrying tickets and a far larger amount of blank, losing tickets. The reader gets a lively impression of such a draw in the virtual reconstruction sponsored by the Belgian National Lottery for its 580^th birthday in 2021.

So, when the lotteries became fairly large enterprises in the sixteenth century with the numbers of tickets sold running into the hundred thousands, their drawings became a lengthy undertaking. In theory, the organisers could have gone for a more swift drawing procedure by only drawing those tickets on which a prize fell. But this path was not taken. Probably, the organisers and the audience thought it necessary for reasons of equity and transparency that all tickets were drawn in the public eye.

In accounts of lottery organisers we see meals and drinks being paid for the different crews who alternated in shifts so the draw could go on uninterruptedly 24/7. That the lottery draw went on day and night is beautifully depicted in the painting by Gillis Coignet (c. 1542-1599) which shows the night-time draw of the Amsterdam Dolhuis lottery of 1592. The stage is believed to be on the square of the vegetable market on the Oudezijds Voorburgwal, near the Dolhuis and Sint-Pieterskerk. Here and there, we see torches and lanterns lighting up in the dark night. On the podium are standing and sitting various officials responsible for the draw. They are dressed in red, white and black, the heraldic colours of the city. Two little boys, in white to symbolise their innocence, draw the lots.  On the pediment and on the stage itself we see the city arms of Amsterdam. The reputation and honour of the city of Amsterdam thus guarantee the fairness of the draw. The draws usually took place in squares because of the need for space and often close to the organiser’s seat (usually therefore the city hall when it came to lotteries set up by the city government), again to exude authority and guarantee the fairness of the draw.

This ritual of the lottery draw continued almost unchanged until the early eighteenth century. There are hardly any indications as to how the public reacted to this almost endless litany of names and proses. The preserved lottery poems are often very funny and witty so you can imagine that people sometimes passed by to listen to a few of them.

Twee maetkens sagemannekens

Sy drincken geerne vuyt volle kannekens

Consten sy aen thoochste lot geraken

Dat bierken sou noch beter smaken

[Two nagging buddies

They love to drink from full cans

If they would get the highest prize

That beer would taste even better]

At the beginning and end of the draw, there will have been crowds in front of the stage, but in between the attention must have gradually faded away. Until, of course, a grand prize was drawn and the bells were rung and the trumpets blared… Then there must have been a rush of people.

Those who were executing the ritual of the lottery draw – those drawing tickets and the persons who shouted the names or poems to the audience present – were often mocked in the lottery poems. For example:

Trecker laet u trecken staen,

wilt lichtelicken thuuswaert gaen,

de paepen van der kercken,

liggen thuus met u wijf en wercken.

[Drawer, stop drawing,

Go home fast

The papist of the church

Is at home working on your wife.]

Others in the audience went a step further. For example, during the Amsterdam Dolhuis lottery, it was forbidden “to throw snowballs, sludge, dirt, stones or anything else at stage or misbehave in other ways”. We often find in the accounts wages to guards who had to intervene when things got out of hand.

In the pediment of the stage of the Amsterdam Dolhuis lottery (1592), actors, possibly rhetoricians, portrayed the mentally ill who would benefit from the New Dolhuis. The theatricality of the draw, especially when more and more proses and fewer names were called in the sixteenth century, was right up the alley of rederijkers’ societies. They naturally had extensive experience in putting on theatrical events.

Sooner or later in the draw, therefore, lottery participants found out whether they had won something or not. The clerks wrote down winning prizes on boards near the stage. After the drawing of the Bogarden school lottery (but not only in this lottery), posters were printed listing the winners ‘up wyens prose ofte divise eenich lot ghevallen was’ (on whose prose or devise a lot had fallen). These posters were also hung on church doors, public places and street corners. Ticket sellers distributed leaflets in other place where tickets were sold so winners could claim their prizes.

Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, lotteries underwent a major transformation in the Low Countries, from a stopgap solution for urban finances to a widely supported literary festival and celebration that could last for weeks and draw large crowds. Not only did the draw have to be fun, every effort was made to make it as transparent and fair as possible. As lotteries counted more and more tickets and it was felt that all tickets should be drawn to ensure transparency, the draw became a very time-intensive enterprise. Fortunately, there were gradually fewer names being called and more and more proses turning the draw into a literary festival. Thus, the lottery became a form of recreation.

Today’s lottery draws also emphasize transparency, but they are not really exciting to watch. To feel some excitement, skin in the game, having bought tickets yourself is a must. The fantasy of getting lucky goes hand in glove with financial investment in the game. However, a 68 day and night draw must have become dull for even the most avid players. The problem of lengthy draws was solved at the end of the 17th century by the so-called Genoese lotto where names or proses were no longer drawn but numbers. This made the draw much shorter and guaranteed the lottery’s continued European popularity in the eighteenth century.

This blog is partially based on Jeroen Puttevils, “The show must go on – De performance van de loterij in de Nederlanden (15de-16de eeuw)”, Nieuwe tijdingen : over vroegmoderne geschiedenis / Vlaams-Nederlandse Vereniging voor Nieuwe Geschiedenis – ISSN 2593-0346 – (2019), p. 79-99.

For those want to know more about Low Countries lotteries see also the following blogs: The Lure of Lady Luck – History, lotteries, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Low Countries (wordpress.com) & https://vrouwenlot.wordpress.com/

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