Guilty Duke

On his high bench in Bow Street Court last week Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sir Rollo Frederick Graham-Campbell fidgeted beneath his robes and wig. Royal Dukes, Archbishops and Dukes are the top dogs of the British peerage, and below Sir Rollo, quietly awaiting judgment as a prisoner, stood that jovial, ruddy sporting peer, His Grace the Duke of Atholl, lord of 200,000 Scottish acres, master of the only private army in Great Britain and a War hero who won by conspicuous bravery in action the D. S. O.

What Atholl had done--no crime in the eyes of sportsmen or charitarians--was to offer for sale through agents 1,000,000 tickets at ten shillings each which the public was asked to buy blind (TIME, Nov. 13). So great is the name of Atholl that 304,808 tickets were sold on the Duke's terms, everyone being sure he would do the right thing. With -L-152,404 ($736,700) in hand Atholl retired to his castle where, as he said, "Ideas come to me from Heaven." The first idea was to pay the expenses of the ticket sale. -L-56,404. Next Atholl sent checks totaling -L-60,000 to strictly British charities. He then had 748 ideas from Heaven, each corresponding to a number on a ticket, and mailed out the remaining -L-36,000 in fat checks to 748 ticket holders, one for -L-2,000 ($9,660).

Dryly from his bench in Bow Street Court last week Sir Rollo said he had no doubt that the Duke of Atholl had planned to do from the beginning what he claimed to have done only after all tickets were sold and the heavenly ideas began to roll in. Sir Rollo pronounced the Duke guilty of violating Britain's 110-year-old-anti-lottery law, fined him -L-25, ordered him to pay -L-36/158 costs (in all $320).

"So ends the first round!" boomed Atholl as his eminent counsel Norman Birkett, K. C. appealed the case to a higher court. "I think," continued His Grace, "that I can claim to have already achieved some material progress in my campaign to establish some sort of charity lottery in the United Kingdom. This must be done to end the present scandalous state of affairs in which British money is being taken from this country by the Irish and other foreign sweepstakes [see below] to the detriment not only of British charities but of the country as a whole."

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