Irish Association for American Studies: Ireland’s America
Proposal for paper: ‘The Irish Hospitals Sweepstake in the USA in
the 1930s’
Dr Marie Coleman,
School of History & Anthropology,
Queen’s University Belfast
The Irish Hospitals Sweepstake was established by statute in the Irish Free State in
1930 to fund the state’s hospital service. The vast majority of tickets were sold
outside Ireland, particularly in countries where such gambling was illegal at the time.
Initially the largest market was in the United Kingdom, but following the introduction
of restrictive legislation there in 1934, the promoters of the sweepstake turned their
attentions to North America and after 1936 the United States became the largest
source of contributions to the Irish sweep. After a brief lull during World War II, the
traffic in Irish sweepstake tickets in the USA resumed in the late 1940s. The success
and survival of the sweep depended on the maintenance of a strong market in the
USA. However, the gradual legalisation of state lotteries from the mid-1960s initiated
a decline from which the Irish sweep never recovered.
This paper proposes to examine a number of factors concerning the
relationship of the Irish sweep with the USA, including: an effort to estimate the
amount of money contributed to the sweep by Americans; the role of the Irish
diaspora and of prominent republicans, including Joseph McGarrity and Connie
Neenan, in the illegal ticket distribution network; the efforts of American Federal
agencies and government departments to disrupt the sweepstake organisation in
America; how the sweep was used by those who sought to legalise gambling in the
USA; the attitudes of both the Irish and American governments to the sweep’s
activities in America; and the portrayal of the Irish sweepstake in American popular
culture, including film and literature.
The paper will be based principally on newspaper reports, files from the Irish
Department of Foreign Affairs and US Federal government files including the State
Department, Post Office Department and Justice Department, US newspaper reports,
and the testament of a former employee of the sweep’s American operation.
Dr Marie Coleman is a graduate of UCD (BA in History, 1994; PhD in History,
1998). From 2001 to 2003 she was a Government of Ireland Post-Doctoral Fellow in
the School of History at UCD. Since 2004 she has been a lecturer in the School of
History and Anthropology, Queen’s University Belfast. She is the author of County
Longford and the Irish Revolution, 1910-1923 (Irish Academic Press, 2003). At
present she is writing a history of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake lottery (1930-1987)
and has published a number of articles on the subject in Irish Economic and Social
History, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy and Irish Historical Studies.