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English society in the eighteenth century was allegedly marked by a 'gambling mania', such was the prevalence and intensity of different forms of 'gaming'. Gambling in Britain in the Long Eighteenth Century subjects this notion to systematic scrutiny, exploring the growth and prevalence of different forms of gambling across Britain and throughout British society in this period, as well as attitudes towards it. Drawing on a vast range of new, empirical evidence, Bob Harris seeks to understand gambling, its growth, and significance within the context of wider trends and impulses in society. This book asks what light gambling practices and habits shed back onto society and the values, hopes, and expectations that informed the lives of those involved. This is a book, therefore, as much about the character of British society in the long eighteenth century as it is about gambling itself.

"This book has been a long time in the making. In 2005, I was privileged to be awarded a personal chair in History by the University of Dundee, and at the 'Discovery Day' lecture series held for new chairs I gave a talk entitled, 'A Modest Defence of Gaming', the title plundered from a rare eighteenth-century pamphlet actually defending gambling. The talk was supposed to be a taster of the sorts of themes which I then thought would inform a new research project on gaming in Britain and its first empire between c.1660-1830. Very quickly thereafter, however, another research project, a major collaborative one on the provincial town in Enlightenment Scotland, took over the bulk of my attention, although I kept collecting material from various archives and keeping my eyes peeled for leads and helpful reading on gambling. Even when the project on Scottish provincial towns was completed, which was in 2014, I turned not to gambling but writing an account of the life of the later eighteenth century Scottish aristocratic republican radical, Lord Daer. Once gambling did become the main preoccupation of my research, it rapidly became clear that identifying further sources was not going to be easy, and these were going to be dispersed across many, geographically disparate collections. Confronted with this challenge, and the difficulties raised by framing a convincing study of gambling, my confidence in the project, it must be said, waned at points"--

While the importance of closer, wider communications to Scotland and Scots adaptation to life within the Union, and the development of Britishness, has been commonly acknowledged, the role of the Post Office within these processes has never been systematically examined. This article charts the increasingly rapid development of postal services within Scotland and linking Scotland to London and the rest of England and Wales from the mid eighteenth century. It demonstrates the sheer extent and scope of growth of postal services in Scotland, and explores their use by different sections of Scottish society, by the mid nineteenth century. While commerce and manufacturing, as well as banking, together with the landed classes, account for the main sources of growth in use of the post, they were far from the sole beneficiaries of expanding, more efficient services. Scotland participated fully in the democratization of letter writing which was a feature of the Georgian period. The article then reflects on the consequences of these developments for the enfolding of Scotland within Britain and the rise of the latter as a salient framework within which people lived their lives. It underlines, in this context, the contemporary importance of letter writing and transmission of printed information to sustaining and forging connections and relationships between people and businesses, and overcoming frictions of distance within Britain.

AbstractThis article brings forward new evidence regarding the circumstances surrounding the origins and authorship of the Gaming Bill of 1782, which was designed to suppress the roulette‐type game of 'Even and Odd'. Hitherto, this Bill has presented something of a puzzle, not only in terms of why it was proposed, but its strange fate; it was never signed into law. The Gaming Bill is viewed alongside a parallel series of parliamentary measures from the 1780s aimed at regulating more tightly the official lottery and derivatives thereof, including, most controversially, lottery insurance, one aspect of which was betting on the outcomes of the lottery draw. By placing these initiatives within a single analytical frame, much can be learnt about the role of parliament and the law in regulating gambling in this period, but also the profound limits of the law in this sphere.

ABSTRACTA striking feature of the history of the Scots burgh in this period, and of bodies within it, was their readiness to resort to legal redress in the Court of Session, Scotland's leading civil court. The law was a regular and often intrusive presence in burgh life, a means by which burghs, guildries and trades incorporations defended their privileges. This article will explore this propensity in relation to what it can tell us both about urban identity and the constitution of urban community in this period, but it will also begin to examine the role which the law may have played in the re-constitution and re-shaping of urban community. In other words, it will consider the law and judgments made in the Court of Session as active forces in a wider process of governance. We know relatively little, in fact, about this dimension of urban governance, but the surviving record is a rich one and demands much more systematic examination.