Chocolate Wheel
The Chocolate Wheel is a game of chance based on a wheel marked with numbers where players are sold numbered tickets corresponding to those on the wheel.
The wheel is spun and the player holding the ticket matching the number on which the wheel’s ‘flapper’ comes to rest wins a prize. The wheels were very popular during the first half of the 20th century for use at community fundraisers. Their use then, as now, required a permit but sometimes local luminaries ran foul of the law and appeared before the courts charged with breaching the Lotteries Act by running a Chocolate Wheel without a permit.
The wheel in the Justice & Police Museum collection was donated by someone who purchased it at a garage sale but noticed something odd about it – a handful of numbers won every spin. It was discovered that two of the metal spokes separating the numbers were secured at the rear with heavier nuts which led to the wheel’s flapper stopping on a small range of numbers. Was the wheel deliberately rigged? Games of chance were popular with many Sydney criminals who had ways of ensuring the odds were always in their favour.
Published on
Collection items
Come in spinner!
Gambling in Australia is regulated by the state and some types of gambling are illegal. The game Two-up, with its catch cry of ‘Come in Spinner!’, is legal only on Anzac Day and only in some states
Convict Sydney
Convict Cap
A hat was known as a castor or a kelp in the convict 'flash' slang language
The trophy cabinet
Trophies are symbolic objects, intended for display as evidence of achievement, especially of victory in a contest of some kind
Bicornes, bonnets & boaters
There’s a variety of headwear across our collections ranging in date from early to late nineteenth century
Convict Sydney
Love token, Donovan
This very detailed token was probably made by a nineteen year old called Cornelius Donovan
Reading the score
Since the early 1800s, Australian households have purchased sheet music to enliven their drawing room repertoire
Close to the heart
Expressions of love and endearment have long been embodied in keepsakes or jewellery worn or held close to the body
Magic lantern at Rouse Hill Estate
The Rouse Hill House magic lantern is a mid-19th century example of a form of image projector which dates back to the 17th century
Projected across time
In the late 1960s, John Terry, then a young man living at Rouse Hill Estate, composed avant-garde music which he set to abstract projected images, and performed at various locations in Sydney