UK Bingo
Bingo has had a long and sometimes turbulent history in the UK with the game enduring regular periods of outlaw status. Bingo found fertile ground in the fields of the gambling culture of the early 1600′s where the earliest London lotteries “shove groat” and dice games were much favoured among the working classes and particularly by the ladies. Seen as a sure fire release from poverty by the poorest of the poor these games tenaciously survived several vigorous Puritan attempts to stamp out the evils of gambling. Bingo as we know it today has been through the wars on its long and bumpy journey and that’s not just a figure of speech. Bing or “housey- housey” as it was know was an immensely popular game in the mess halls and barracks during both world wars and was even played in the trenches during intense shelling in World War 1. Now that’s dedication!
Servicemen returning to the UK after the war brought housey-housey back with them and it didn’t take long for the game to become a sought after fixture at ex-services clubs, fairs and market side shows. The game was still basically frowned on as a commercial entity at that point and the 1920′s to 1940′s saw many prosecutions although the law involved were open to interpretation by authorities and a blind eye was, more often than not, turned in the direction of the “perpetrators”. The game as a no-cash carnival attraction and charity fund raiser was allowed and hugely popular though and continued to flourish throughout the UK until the Betting and Gaming Act of 1960 paved the way for the legal practice of playing bingo for prizes. Although there was still much resistance to any kind of formalised gambling bingo’s sheer popularity won through in the end and the game and its millions of avid followers have gone from strength to strength ever since.
During this period another social phenomenon was taking place in the UK that saw the closing of many of the popular cinemas that had been a so part of English culture. Many of these old venues eventually became bingo parlours and stepped up to fill the shoes vacated by Saturday night at the “flicks” with a pastime that was to be enthusiastically embraced and become as part of the British cultural landscape as fish, chips and mushy peas. This evolutionary step was, in turn, to become a victim of the inexorable march of time and technology with the advent of the internet age ringing the death knell for the traditional bingo parlour. I’m perhaps being a little premature with the live bingo doom and gloom, but if one considers how the previously vibrant and buzzing bingo parlours are being closed or re-purposed and the way online bingo is bursting at the seams it does seem inevitable.
This newest chapter in the UK bingo saga is by no means an unhappy ending though as the online bingo movement has done more for the overall popularity of bingo and brought the game to a wider and more diverse audience than any other development in its entire history. In truth online bingo is probably the best thing that could have happened to UK bingo and has almost certainly saved the game from a slow but inevitable spiral into obscurity. Long live bingo!
