New-York Lottery Gambling Game

The Politics of Wowserism

Christian moralists were particularly critical of the racecourse as an area of ill-repute in which people were corrupted under 'conditions of excitement'. Ironically, the legalizing of the totalisator in the 1881 Act had given opponents of new york lottery a sharper focus for their invective. They denounced gambling in general and called for the banning of the totalisator as a specific measure of reform. Baptists in 1886 began a myriad of anti-totalisator petitions which Methodists (from 1887) and Presbyterians (from 1890) continued. In February 1892 the Congregationalist Church strongly condemned the use of the totalisator to raise colonial revenue. In 1897 the Governor's visit to the Grand
National meeting at Riccarton brought vigorous protest from a number of ministers on the grounds that it 'popularized this gambling sin'. When the anti-totalistic campaign broadened in the early years of this century, it would envelop a broader middle-class opinion throughout the country.

Denunciation of Gambling

During the 1890S Protestant denunciation of gambling grew more acerbic. 'Its
nature has so invaded all honest, healthful and manly sports that it has now become the greatest evil of our time,' inveighed Rev. William Dunn in 1893; 'It is producing moral rottenness in our national life,' spoke Methodist minister John Cocker in 1897.49 Church leaders were both determined and articulate. Their key quest was for c, and campaigns against new york lottery,
Intemperance, sexual immorality and desecration of Sundays grew in intensity and enthusiasm. As a result there was growing support among their audience for lottery gambling reform. When both Dunn's and Cocker's sermons were printed as booklets they enjoyed a wide distribution. From the turn of the century women anti-gamblers added a social perspective that was more persuasive over a wider audience.

Opposition to Gambling

While most Protestant churches were united in their opposition to gambling, Anglicans and Roman Catholics were ambivalent. Christchurch's bishop, Churchill Julius, was an outspoken critic of gambling, and a few other Anglicans had spoken out in Public forums, but the wider church was unable to endorse the movement. Indeed, some parishes ran raffles at church fetes. Anglicanism was partly an expression of English nationalism which, to become established and survive, needed to encompass a broad range of social opinion in its tenets. Its adherents had more freedom to espouse divergent views on social issues than did fundamentalist Protestants who were constrained by strict interpretations of the nature of 'divine order', in which gambling had no place.
Also, from the 1890s, many middle- and upper-middle class Anglicans favored a more ritualistic and liturgical form of worship which encouraged social distance, providing a refuge from the world rather than a preparation for its battles. This triggered a response from among the more fundamental Anglican congregations and helps to explain why at least some 'low-church' synods supported the anti-gambling cause, while 'high-church' synods were disinterested in their response.
The Roman Catholic Church was similarly divided. The Freeman's Journal, an
Auckland-based Catholic weekly, described gambling as one of the greatest curses of the age and in February 1887 regretted that in Auckland there was 'hardly a spot left that was uncontaminated by its vile influence'. But this view was based on social rather than moral grounds, and there were few statements from the church itself that gambling was evil under either criterion.