Other languages

• Dutch: lot, loterijticket, loterijbriefje 
• French: billet de loterie 
• German: Los 
• Italian: biglietto della lotteria 
• Polish: los na loterię, kupon na loterię
• Spanish: billete de lotería 

Material form

Subject

Description

Lottery was a game of chance in the early modern period. A lottery ticket was bought in order to participate in a lottery. In these days two forms of lotteries were current in Europe: the lotto and the class lottery. The lotto is basically a game in which the participants bet on a specific number. They win when this number is drawn. The lotto was common in France and Italy. In the Dutch Republic the class lottery was more common. These class lotteries worked with a predetermined number of tickets and prizes and were divided into series or classes. The size of the prizes increased with the classes, as did the price of the lottery tickets. If your ticket has no prize in the previous class, you have the chance to continue playing, by exchanging the ticket for a more expensive one. People could also buy a lottery ticket for all classes at once. In this case the tickets were slightly cheaper. When you win in the penultimate class, part of the costs were refunded. Buyers for the lottery tickets often added their own verse or motto (prosen, deviesen) to the ticket. This verse was read out during the draws and had an entertaining function. Lottery tickets with verses were common from the sixteenth until the nineteenth century. 

Related terms

games

Sources

B. Bernard, M. Ansiaux (eds.), Loteries en Europe: cinq siècles d’histoire (Brussels/Ghent: Loterie nationale Snoeck-Ducaju & Zoon, 1994).

B. Bernard, H. Devisscher, A. Gay, Loterijen in Europa: Vijf eeuwen geschiedenis (Ghent: Snoeck-Ducaju, 1994).

G.A. Fokker, Geschiedenis der loterijen in de Nederlanden: eene bijdrage tot de kennis van de zeden en gewoonten der Nederlanders in de XVe, XVIe, en XVIIe eeuwen (Amsterdam: Frederik Muller, 1862).

A. Huisman, J. Koppenol, Daer compt de Lotery met trommels en trompetten! Loterijen in de Nederlanden tot 1726. (Hilversum: Verloren 1991).

S. Raux, Lotteries, Art Markets, and Visual Culture in the Low Countries, 15th-17th Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2018).