How a London socialite founded the national lottery

Hilda Leyel wanted to raise money for disabled servicemen. Despite initial public disapproval and the threat of criminal charges and imprisonment, her idea stuck. Martin Purdy explains

Ms Leyel’s ballots helped set up Westfield War Memorial Village in Lancaster in the 1920s – it was a home for veterans

In December 1921, the public gallery of Marylebone Magistrates’ Court in London was filled with “fashionably dressed ladies’’ keen to hear the latest charges to be levied against a popular socialite called Hilda Leyel. In taking on such a well-connected member of British society, the prosecutors were playing with high stakes – and it was a roll of the dice that would ultimately result in the rules of charitable fundraising being changed for ever across the United Kingdom.

The breaches of the Betting Act that Leyel found herself charged with were all linked to a national lottery – one that by 1920 had already raised more than £250,000 to specifically help some of the 1.7 million disabled servicemen who had returned to home shores from the killing fields of the First World War.

Billed as “golden ballots”, the lotteries were the first of their kind and the forerunners of the same National Lottery that continues to persuade so many of us to part with a smattering of our cash each week. Unlike the modern lottery, all of the profits from Hilda Leyel’s ballots went to hospitals that specialised in the rehabilitation of the wounded of war, including prosthetic limbs, work retraining schemes and bespoke housing projects. Very like the modern lottery, the winners could win life-changing prizes, from £25,000 in cash to strings of pearls – or a cow and an acre of land on which to graze it!