Banknotes

S.W.Fores No. 11, for Self, Fool and Dupe, 1 Penny, 14 June 1818, promising to pay ‘Thos Plunder, Puffwell Esqr or Bearer, when Lottery Insurance shall have ceased and when the Morocco-men & those infamous Leeches their Masters, shall have been, by aid of the Gallows, deprived of the means of robbing the humble table of a meal, or, driving Property-stricken Credulity into Despair and Suicide’, signed by Susan Nosmock and Tabby Allrag, with a vignette showing a purse being pickpocketted, labelled ‘A Pickpocket is a Thief’ and accompanied by the text ‘We live by picking pockets!! It affords us our Girls, our Villas, our Coracles, our Barrouches’ along with ‘A Lottery Insurer is a Pickpocket, ergo, A Lottery Insurer is a Their, Consequently A Villain and a Vagabond, Shun him as you would Death, extremely fine £100-£150

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Sir David Kirch Collection of Skit Notes.

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Collection

This note is a simple, if long winded, protest against both lotteries and lottery insurers. While many lotteries were certainly suspect, if not outright corrupt, and lottery insurance was also, in many cases at least, a scam, they remained very popular with those who couldn't really afford them, as they do to this day.