as shall be Adventurers, that the said Mr. Child shall and will stand obliged to Each of them for their several Adventures. And that each Adventurer shall receive their Money back if the said Lottery be not drawn and finished before the first Day of February next.
This Mr Child is said to have been the first regular banker. He began business soon after the Restoration, and received the honour of knighthood. He lived in Fleet Street, where the shop still continues in a state of the highest respectability.5 A subsequent notice says that
The King will probably, to-morrow, in the Banquetting House, see all the Blanks told over, that they may not exceed their Number; and that the Papers on which the Prizes are to be written shall be rolled up in his Presence; and that a Child, appointed, either by his Majesty or the Adventurers, shall draw the Prizes.
The most popular of all the schemes of the time was that drawn at the Dorset Garden Theatre, near Salisbury Square, Fleet Street, with the capital prize of a thousand pounds for a penny. The drawing began on October 19, 1698; and in the Protestant Mercury of the following day its fairness was said to give universal content to all that were concerned. In the next number is found an inconsistent story as to the possessor of the prize. It runs thus: “Sometime since, a boy near Branford going to school one morning, met an old woman, who asked his charity; the boy replied, he had nothing to give her but a piece of bread and butter, which she accepted. Sometime after, she met the boy again, and told