The following is taken from a 1902 volume of the historical manuscripts Commission and can be found in the collection of Sir Leo Wombwell, Bart, of Newburgh Priory. It was discovered by Alan Longbottom, one of our members, and caused great amusement at a Claremont lunch time session, especially as one of our volunteers is a minister’s daughter! This is not the kind of topic one expects to find in an historic Manuscript document!

A Bill for a Charitable Lottery for the relief of the distressed Virgins of Great Britain. Whereas, by the melancholy disuse of holy matrimony in these kingdoms, an infinite number of His Majesty’s female subjects are left upon the hands of their parents, in the un-natural state of virginity, to the prejudice of the Commonwealth, the unsupportable burdening of private families and the unspeakable affliction of the said females, be it enacted for the necessary encouragement of propagation, that all virgins in Great Britain from fifteen to forty shall be disposed of by lottery.

The article lists the first prizes to be sums of money but the second prizes to be:
Beauties….100,
Huswifes….5,
Pretty Girls….5,000,
Ladies of quality 5,000.
Agreeables….10,000,
Wits…10,
Relations of the first minister or his mistress….25
The lowest prizes were to be:
Women of fashion and breeding….300,000.
Good players at quadrille…12,000
Misses of great accomplishment…30,000,
Special breeders (parson’s daughters)…1,700
Saints…20, Good condition girls, alias friskies….100,000.

Rules for the lottery were simple:
-the said lottery shall be carried out in the usual way -whosoever a man shall draw he shall be obliged to keep the same
- no man shall be permitted to take a ticket that has not an estate of at least £100 or is an idle and useless person such as a courtier, attorney, dean, fellow of a college, - poet or the like who is expected to serve their country this way since they do it no other
- beauties shall be settled by the remaining members of the Kit Kat club
- the pretty and agreeable by the number of their lovers
- the wits by number of their enemies
- no woman of scandalous and lewd behaviour, who cannot possibly be mistaken for a virgin, shall be put into the lottery
- no man shall be compelled to take a ticket
- no man shall take above one ticket except peers, privy counsellors, judges and members of parliament who are allowed to take as far as three
- neither Senesino nor Carestini shall be suffered to take a ticket
- _______________ Esq. is ipso facto an unfit person and remains excluded
- the lottery is to be drawn on the 1st of July 1734 and renewed every seven years
- M, __________ spinster, trusting too much to her beauty, wit etc and sowing a cruel delight in the pains and sufferings of her lovers, it is thought to make and example of her by not admitting her into the number of prizes in the present lottery
- this bill shall be read every Sunday before sermon in all parish churches in Great Britain.

A few explanations of subjects within the article may be of interest. The Kit Kat Club was an 18th century Whig literary club initiated in 1703 to promote the Protestant succession. The name came from its original meeting place, a tavern near Temple Bar, London, kept by Christopher Cat or Kat. Christopher was a pastry cook, and his mutton pies were known as ‘Kit – cats’. The club was active from c. 1700 to 1720. There were 42 members of the club including Walpole, Congreve, Addison and Steel. In 1702, Jacob Tomson, publisher, commissioned Sir Godfrey Kneller to paint portraits of all members. The paintings were to be displayed in a room at his house at Barns Elms, near Putney, where the club sometimes met. The room had low ceilings and the portraits could not be painted the usual size. They were painted less than half-size. This became known as the kit-kat size. In 1815, Sir Richard Phillips visited Barns Elms to see the setting of the club. The mouldings and ornaments were of the fashion of the day but going to ruin through dry rot. There were faded red cloth hangings showing where the portraits had hung with the number and names in chalk as a guide to the hanger and I read the names of Addison, Steele, Garth and Dryden.

The portraits are owned by the National Gallery and can be viewed at Beningborough Hall in North Yorkshire. Senesino and Carestini were Italian castratos, great favourites of the ladies in the early 18th century and much used in Handel’s operas.

Janet C. Senior, Assistant Librarian