Book review: The Irish Sweep: a history of the Irish hospitals sweepstake, 1930-87

Mike Huggins, University of Cumbria, reviews the book 'The Irish Sweep: A History of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake, 1930-87' by Marie Coleman (UCD Press, 2009, ISBN 987-1906359-41-6).

Coleman’s well-researched and very detailed book is not about sport. It is about the way in which the Irish organized funding largely from Britain and North America for cash-strapped voluntary hospitals, first in Dublin and then from 1933 across the Free State. Hospital money came not from the public purse but from three annual sweeps, all on English horse races famous for generating betting interest: the Grand National, the Epsom Derby and either the Cambridgeshire or Cesarewitch. During British rule and after initial independence in 1922, Ireland was one of the poorest countries in Western Europe, and only remained financially solvent as a result of limitations on government expenditure. Part of Coleman’s theme is the evolution of the Irish state, and in so doing she touches on how the sweep connected with Irish nationalist politics, the health services, media advertising and broadcasting, sponsorship and social welfare, gambling and unsavoury gangsterism, charity and commerce.