CHAPTER XVI. LOTTERIES AND LOTTERY INSURANCES.

boys who drew the Museum Lottery at Guildhall to conceal a ticket, and to bring it to him, promising that he would at once return it. His intention was to insure it in all the offices with a view to defraud the keepers. The boys were so frightened at the proposition that they gave notice to the managers of the lottery, and pointed out the delinquent, who was, however, discharged, as there was no law by which to punish him. On the 5th of December another of the boys engaged to draw the numbers in the State Lottery at Guildhall was examined before Sir Charles Asgill relative to a number that had been drawn out the Friday before, on which an assurance had been made in almost every office in London. The boy confessed that he was prevailed upon to conceal the ticket No. 21,481, by a man who paid him for so doing; that the man copied the number; and that the next day he followed the man’s instructions, and put his hand into the wheel as usual, with the ticket in it, and then pretended to draw it from among the rest. The instigator of the offence had actually received £400 of the insurance-office keepers. Had all of them paid him, the whole sum would have amounted to £3000; but some of them suspected a fraud had been committed, and caused the inquiry which led to the boy’s confessing both the temptation and his folly. On the next day the man who insured the ticket was examined. He was clerk to a hop-factor in Goodman’s Fields; but not being the person who had persuaded the boy to secrete the ticket and pretend