Advance ticket sales have ended but plenty of additional tickets remain available at the door.
Profs and Pints DC presents: “When Marriage Was a Lottery Prize,” a look at how lotteries once helped support, and sometimes to pair off, Europe’s single women, with Amy Froide, professor of history at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and author of Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England and Singlewomen in the European Past.
In seventeenth century a rise in the number of single people in England and colonial America caused consternation and inspired creative attempts to encourage matrimony. One result was the promotion of lotteries that either women could play to win money for a dowry or sometimes—far more to the point—that actually offered women or, less often, men as their prizes. Throughout the late 1600s and early 1700s, local periodical coverage of these drawings inspired every bit as much fascination then as shows like The Bachelor and Love Island do today.
Come learn about this fascinating chapter in the history of marriage and dating with Professor Amy Froide, an award-winning teacher of British and European women’s history from 1500 to 1800 who has extensively researched women, gender, society, and the economy during that time.
She’ll discuss how, while people-as-prizes lotteries were fictional and satirical, governments were indeed very focused on marrying people off at a time when lotteries abounded as means by which governments funded foreign wars. Moreover, some of the very same single women who were depicted as available for marriage to the man with the lucky number actually turned to state lotteries as financial investments. Unlike the lotteries of today, these were more of a sure thing than a gamble, for the money paid to purchase the ticket eventually got returned, with interest, by the state.
In this way women became government investors and, ironically, found a way to maintain themselves outside of marriage, subverting state schemes to function as the annoying relative who constantly urges single family members to get hitched.
It’s a talk that will provide some historical context for today’s dating culture and maybe even make you give new meaning to the lyrics “867-5309.” (Advance tickets: $12. Doors: $15, or $13 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later. Please allow yourself time to place any orders and get seated and settled in. Please also bring proof of Covid vaccination and be prepared to wear a mask except while seated and eating or drinking, as Profs and Pints reserves the right to require both if necessary in response to local infection rates. The Bier Baron will be requiring event attendees to purchase a minimum of two items, which can be food or beverages, including soft drinks.)
Image: From “The Story of Pamela,” plate 9, a 1745 engraving by L. Truchy.