UK - Leeds museum seeks help solving 'Earthly Paradise' Victorian lottery pictogram

[wfgodot]

From Daily Telegraph:

Can you solve a Victorian puzzle promising 'Earthly Paradise'?
A museum is calling on people to solve a cryptic 150-year-old
message which could hold the key to an “Earthly Paradise”.

The historic poster, thought to date from the 1860s, spells out the prize for a lottery in the form of a pictogram.

But baffled museum curators cannot work out quite what the lottery is offering players.

The poster is being displayed for the first time as part of an exhibition on the history of games and gambling at Abbey House Museum in Kirkstall in Leeds.
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Pictograms were a popular game in Victorian times and even before. Jane Austen heroines would write pictograms to one another in their letters.
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But curators have not managed to decipher the full meaning of the advert. Kitty Ross, curator of social history at the museum, is asking the public to help.

“There are lots of bits of it that have been puzzling people,” she said.
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"For example there is a globe and two dice. We puzzled for ages on that one, thinking it could be anything. Then we suddenly realised it was paradise [pair of dice]. So it's quite corny, full of wordplay and puns."
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more, with the puzzle itself and the bits the museum staff have figured out at the link above

 

[tezi]

I am not good at solving those kinds of things...LOL:what:

 

[airplanelamp]

Catch fortune when you can as any man would rather get fortune
than not. The attention of all is called to the New Lottery Office which by a small risk they may get
independent fortune. They should therefore hasten to the nearest Lottery Office and then by purchasing a share they may secure what they desire and which cannot fail to make the mare go, and leave them, (if money be their Diety) in an earthly paradise.

 

[airplanelamp]

LOL. I think I solved it.

 

[wfgodot]

Mail the results to the museum! Doesn't look like many even approached something final in the comments below the article.

 

[txsvicki]

What are they offering though? A chance to win money and buy what they want? I don't get why they're trying to get people to buy lottery entries then saying if money be their deity. Maybe it's a religious ad against the vice of gambling and suggesting they could lose their horse that would pull a buggy and be important to have.

 

[airplanelamp]

What are they offering though? A chance to win money and buy what they want? I don't get why they're trying to get people to buy lottery entries then saying if money be their deity. Maybe it's a religious ad against the vice of gambling and suggesting they could lose their horse that would pull a buggy and be important to have.

"Money makes the mare go" is an old saying implying something like....money makes the world go round....and with money you can get others to do what you want...

I think they are trying to entice people to play by saying that the small risk could lead to big riches that will allow them to have anything they desire. Money makes the mare go implies that with money they can make anyone do anything they want and/or buy anything they desire...giving them an "Earthly Paradise"

 

[wfgodot]

It's a nudge-wink nod to the Deity couched in a savvy Victorian get-rich-quick scheme.

 

[txsvicki]

I thought it says "for a small risk they may get deep in debt" but see in the comments that it's independent fortune.

 

[teedie2]

I thought it says "for a small risk they may get deep in debt" but see in the comments that it's independent fortune.

Nah, you must be thinking of the two brothers who won the $75,000 lottery, and used it to buy meth, etc., blew up their house, sending one to hospital and the other to jail, where he will be joined by the injured man asap. Now, those two guys are going to be really deep in debt!

KS - Brothers celebrating $75,000 lottery ticket win purchase meth, blow house up - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community