FROM THE ARCHIVES:THE IRISH Hospitals' Sweepstakes was set up in 1930 as a private company to fund hospitals, providing much needed cash for the health service and making its owners, including former Free State minister Joe McGrath, very rich.
Although illegal in practically every country in which it sold tickets, mainly using Irish networks, it was highly successful until State-run lotteries undermined it in the 1980s.
This report, from 1937, of the drawing of tickets on the Grand National shows the ceremony with which the draws were conducted.
IN A fanciful setting, the twentieth sweepstake draw, organised by the Irish Hospitals’ Trust, opened in the Mansion House, Dublin, yesterday.
The theme of the setting was the “Drawn the Favourite” feeling, and the stage was decorated with the “castle in the clouds”, which some people are inclined to build when they buy a ten-shilling ticket in the sweepstake.
Shortly after half-past-nine in the morning the usual procession of nurses in uniform marched onto the stage with the golden bags containing the last few thousand counterfoils, and these were carefully emptied into the drum, which was decorated to represent the gates of fortune. Then, after a fanfare of trumpets, the usual introductory speeches commenced.
Viscount Powerscourt, Chairman of the Hospitals’ Committee, told the large audience that there were some very sound government brains behind the business of administering the funds for the benefit of the hospitals. They were not going to plunge madly into schemes which might become useless if anything happened to the sweepstakes.
He referred to the £10,000 per annum which is to be provided for medical research, and said that another committee had been set up to buy books for a library scheme for the hospitals The research scheme was the product of years of thought by the committee, sitting in consultation with the best medical brains of the country.
The articles of association provided that the chairman would be appointed by the minister for Local Government and Public Health, and that the other members should consist of representatives from the leading seats of medical learning in the country.
Referring to the value of the research work, he said that someday, perhaps, a cure would be found for cancer, and it would be a wonderful thing for Ireland if the cure should be found in Dublin – and why not?
The formal announcement as to just how much money had been received was made by Mr Jack O’Sheehan, who said that the total proceeds amounted to £2,786,432. He followed with the details of the manner in which the money was divided – £1,662,233 for prizes (plus £54,800 in sellers’ prizes), and £512,181 for the National Hospital Trustees.
The gaily-dressed girls who had taken part in the mixing process on Thursday, Friday and Saturday of last week then retired from the platform, and their places where taken by nurses. Within a few minutes the first horse was drawn – it was Thieffry, and the first counterfoil to draw it was from “Europe”. (The system of “lumping together” all European countries, except the Irish Free State, has been used by the announcer since the sweepstake was made illegal in England.)
With monotonous regularity the draw went on. Colonel Eamon Broy, the Civic Guards Commissioner, relinquished his post of supervisor at the morning interval to a subordinate, but returned again just before lunch, when the 50,000th counterfoil was to be drawn.
This task was given to Mr Frank Fahy, Speaker of the Dáil, who joined the role of nurses at the drum, bared his right forearm (displaying a good length of white cuff in the process), and plunged his hand in through a porthole.
The counterfoil which he drew was that of H Dembo, of Johannesburg, and the horse drawn for the counterfoil was Double Crossed. After this ceremony, Mr Fahy made a little speech. He remarked that it had been said that the sweepstakes put the Irish Free State on the map of the world. Whether that was the best way or not of advertising the country, opinions differed.
He himself had been somewhat critical, but he must have regard to the other side of the story – the provision made for the sick poor, and the fact that the State could not have financed the hospitals as the “sweeps” had done.
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