IRISH SWEEP LUCK

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 11683, 7 July 1932, Page 5

IRISH SWEEP LUCK

NEARLY £20,000 AN HOUR. GIRLS FAINT AT DESK. When any of the 5000 women clerks in Dublin fainted at her desk under the strain of the great inpouring of money for the Irish sweep stake, a waiting reserve rushed forward and took over her ta?k- This happened several times. Never ‘ has the hospitals’ sweepstake known such a closing day. In the twelve hours in which the offices were open, says the '‘Daily Express.” the astonishing sum of £220,000, pushed over the counter? by eager men and women, came to swell the total prize money—nearly £20,000 an hour.

It poured in from every part- of the earth, by every conceivable source and channel —by special courier from the Continent, by personal messengers from all parts of Great Britain and Ireland. Interpreters wore needed, to deal with some of the visitors. From dawn, women in fur coats had struggled with women in shawls for precedence in the never-ending queues which lined the streets leading to the sweep offices. Business men in morning dress, coal-heavers, shop assistants, shorthand typists, and “out- of works” in woollen mufflers—all jostled one another in a. last frenzied rush to join in the ten-shilling gamble for a fortune. The boats from England brought thousands of people. A floor manager front a. leading London store handed in the largest individual sum received over the counters during tho day—£27,ooo. The sweep officials recognised this visitor as a man who, oh two previous visits brought £30,000' altogether. This total of nearly £60,000 was sent, he explained, by customers of his firm all over the United Kingdom. * • , - - * ; ‘