It was a country fair game where a dealer would select numbered discs from a cigar box and players would mark their cards with beans. They yelled "beano" if they won. When the game reached North America in , it became known as "beano". It was first played at a carnival near Atlanta, Georgia. New York toy salesman Edwin S. Lowe renamed it "bingo" after he overheard someone accidentally yell "bingo" instead of "beano.
He hired a Columbia University math professor, Carl Leffler, to help him increase the number of combinations in bingo cards. By , Leffler had invented 6, different bingo cards. They were developed so there would be fewer non-repeating number groups and conflicts when more than one person got Bingo at the same time. Lowe was a Jewish immigrant from Poland. Not only did his E. Lowe company produce bingo cards, but he also developed and marketed the game Yahtzee , for which he bought the rights from a couple who played it on their yacht.
Lowe died in A Catholic priest from Pennsylvania approached Lowe about using bingo as a means of raising church funds. When bingo started being played in churches it became increasingly popular. By , an estimated 10, bingo games were played weekly. While gambling is banned in many states, they may allow bingo games to be hosted by churches and non-profit groups to raise funds.
Bingo has been one of the games offered at many casinos, both in Nevada and those operated by Native American tribes. Bingo is a popular game played for recreational therapy and socialization in skilled nursing facilities and retirement homes.
If press headlines about bingo were the only source investigated it would appear that in commercial bingo developed from nowhere. Before the Betting and Gaming Act allowed commercial bingo to take off the game then known as tombola, lotto or housey-housey was regularly played by hundreds of thousands of people.
In Britain the earliest lottery took place in the reign of Elizabeth I and was aimed at rich people. As Protestantism became ever-more Puritan in its outlook gambling was increasingly frowned upon and was severely restricted once the Puritans took power in The change to a government based on Protestant principles meant people had to keep gambling out-of-sight of the authorities.
After Charles II was restored as King in public and private gambling became hugely popular and gambling was often run as business, making good profits. Bingo is a game of pure chance, based upon random numbers, and so the history of bingo as a leisure pursuit lies in the random numbers games of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
The first British occurrence of a game resembling bingo, based upon random numbers, organised by and for working women was in An order raised by the Lord Mayor of London prohibited the barrow women from dicing. They were clearly not too impressed at their gambling being interfered with and got round the law by carrying wheels marked with numbers:.
Which being turned, govern the chance by the figure an hand in the centre points to when stopped. From in the reign of Queen Anne the British government promoted a State Lottery to help boost the government income.
There was widespread newspaper reporting of lottery winners and their backgrounds, which made people aware of the large prizes available and that these were sometimes won by poor people. A lottery win seems to have been widely understood as a way of rising from poverty to at least comfort. The State Lottery sold tickets at ten guineas; these were clearly beyond the reach of the poorer classes in society. However, tickets were divided up into sixteenths, and shares in a ticket could be purchased for twelve shillings and sixpence.
The illegal, private lotteries, with tickets available for as little as a halfpenny, were immensely popular with poorer gamblers, especially women. These were run, virtually unchecked, throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The Newgate Calendar dated 11 August reported that:. Knight… where the most destructive practices to the poor were carrying on, that of Private Lotteries called Little Goes … The wives of many industrious mechanics, by attending these nefarious houses, have not only been duped out of their earnings which ought to have been applied to the earning of bread for their families , but have even pawned their beds, wedding rings and almost every article they were possessed of, for that purpose.
The parallel with a modern game of bingo is clear. A large number of women got together to gamble. In fact there were occasions where over women were arrested for playing illegal lottery games. A parliamentary committee of estimated that each servant in London probably spent twenty-five shillings a year on illegal lotteries and insurances. They calculated that if all other wage-earning classes in the metropolis were spending similar amounts on such gambling then perhaps half a million pounds sterling was placed on various numbers games in London each year.
Thus it can be understood that while the individual amounts staked were small, the actual volume of such gambling was significant and widespread. The earliest reliable description of a game of bingo dates back to around when the archaeologist John Stephens was travelling in Mexico. Every person at the table had before him or her a paper about a foot square, covered with figures in rows, and a small pile of grains of corn, and by its side a thumping stick some eighteen inches long and one in diameter; while amid all the noise, hubbub, and confusion, the eyes of all at the tables were constantly upon the papers before them.
In that hot place, they seemed like a host of necromancers and witches, some of the latter young and extremely pretty, practising the black art. Within arms length was an imp of a boy, apparently the ringleader in this nocturnal orgy, who stood on a platform, rattling a bag of balls, and whose intermittent screeching, singsong cries had throughout risen shrill and distinct above every other sound.
The principle of the game, or the scheme, consists of different combinations of numbers, from one to ninety, which are written on papers, nine rows on each side, with five figures in each row…. Every player marks on his paper with a grain of corn the number called off, and he who is first able to mark five numbers in a row coins the purse. This he announces by rapping on the table with the stick, and by standing up in his place. The boy sings over again the numbers drawn, and if, on comparison, all is found right, delivers the purse.
The game is then ended and another begins. While this description comes from the New World the game of lotto as described here was also played in Malta, Spain and Italy. The British Navy had a large garrison in Malta from and seems to have picked up the game from the Maltese. The game was called tombola was officially sanctioned on Royal Naval ships from c and in the British Army as House from c The numbers used went from , with five figures in each row, in exactly the same fashion to that described in Mexico, with bottle tops, uniform buttons or pieces of bread used by players to mark off the numbers called out.
The outbreak of the First World War in was eight years after the government had attempted to prevent gambling by poorer people through banning cash betting. Accounts of life in the armed forces over the period feature descriptions of bingo, and of the various cheats that took place, and an army chaplain in World War One saw housey-housey as a two edged sword:. Despite the ambivalence of opinion about bingo in the First World War it appears to have been a popular game and one where potential prizes were large.
One veteran recollected a housey-housey game in at Catterick Barracks, Yorkshire. These games were popular with the men, but the sergeant and the corporal evidently fixed the games:.
The most complex game tolerated by the authorities was house. Twenty-four cards were issued at two shillings and six pence a time. Each card had three lines with five numbers on. One man handled the cash and cards while the other called out the numbers. Bingo was not only played in the trenches, there were fund-raising games in England, with the more liberal churches running bingo games usually called tombola and lotteries, although the dubious legal status of such games prevented the larger charities from adopting gambling as a fundraising tool.
After the Armistice the British working classes were promised a land fit for heroes, and expectations were high. Many people felt let-down by the government in the inter-war years as times were hard and there was severe poverty in the manufacturing regions of Britain. However, gambling remained a popular pastime amongst the working classes despite the illegality of the pastime.
While some women may have been laying bets for husbands and fathers, it seems probable that many more were betting on their own behalf.
Indeed, it is in the interwar years that the first prosecutions for illegal games of housey-housey are found in British archives.
In Barrow-in- Furness from the s the local market had sideshows running bingo, then: [ 20 ]. In the mid s to late s there was a fair running for a while, a semi-permanent fair at West Shore and that included the equivalent of bingo…She always spent modestly, but she was lucky. Housey-housey was also played on waste ground and in yards of industrial areas by crowds of youths, although these gatherings were usually broken up by the police, rather than prosecuted with the full force of the law.
The Metropolitan Police were concerned about the spread of commercial bingo, noting that:. Since a large number of prosecutions for bingo have taken place all over the Metropolitan Police Divisions. It is quite immaterial whether the prizes are in cash or food.
In the Peckham area the police were aware of seven operators, of whom the most noticeable was Louis Hart, who had premises on the High Street. Hart had been running games since at least and had been prosecuted on two previous occasions. There was often a queue of people waiting for a bingo board to become vacant so that they could join the game.
The players sat or stood around an open rectangle made up of tables on which were placed the numbered bingo boards. Inside the rectangle was sufficient gangway for two assistants to move around freely during the game. One assistant would take the stake money and hand out the pasteboard squares that were used for covering numbers called. The assistant had a supply of wooden balls that were handed in turn to each player; the player would throw the ball into the box, thus selecting the next number to be called.
In order to maintain the interest of the players and to accommodate the slow selection of numbers the rhyming calls were an essential part of the game. The games last less than two minutes. There are a number of interesting aspects to this case. The first is that commercial gaming attracting women players was so prevalent in the Metropolitan Police District, but it is also significant that the police state that the game is called bingo.
The Americans claim that Edwin Lowe coined this name in c It seems strange that in an era when Americanisation of culture was largely through the medium of film and music that the name would travel across the Atlantic to working class Peckham so rapidly, especially as there is no American film of the era featuring the game. Housey-housey developed as a seaside and fairground game during the years between and , with the division between prize and cash bingo becoming well established early on.
A more common procedure was for the organiser of the game to give a token amount to charity while keeping a portion for profit and offering either cash or goods as a prize. It is claimed by Roger Bingham sadly with no reference to a source that a Mr. On winning games she at first chose presents for her parents, but found that the prizes she thought extremely attractive were not appreciated:.
When I opened the tin I found it was only half full so I took it back to the stall and complained. An account of the life of the child of a regular soldier in the inter-war years also includes recollections of bingo games, organised by his father:. In the army he was in constant demand as a housey-housey barker, in what is known today as bingo. He had a pseudonym for every number up to a hundred. I can remember some of them: she was only—sweet sixteen, all the sixes—clickety-click, key of the door—twenty-one, a couple of ducks—twenty-two —and so on.
The soldiers would join in to chant the numbers. However, the principles and rules of our beloved bingo have stayed largely the same since its inception. Food and drink offerings along with the community element have ensured the popularity of the game.
It is a linked bingo game for all licensed bingo clubs the first game took part in July and is still popular today. There are currently licensed bingo clubs in the UK The history of Bingo - Online. The original site was extremely basic in style, however it paved the way for the online bingo world to grow and flourish. There are currently digital bingo sites running in the UK. Over three million people enjoy playing in the UK alone.
As more and more players get involved, jackpots get higher, and the community gets larger. Bingo History Timeline.
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