3-071-000 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Drawing lots for admission to the Strangers' Gallery, House of Commons, [Palace of Westminster], 1881. '[Our] Artist...has cleverly delineated the process of filtering, as it were, visitors through the purgatorial corridor they have frequently to linger in ere they can gain admission to what they appear to regard as the seventh heaven of the Strangers' Gallery of the House of Commons...when an "Irish scene," or a Ministerial statement of import is expected, more than twice, sixty visitors will present their orders for admission. Let it be supposed that our typical stranger has shown his pass to the policeman at the door, and been admitted to the corridor lined with statues of famous Parliamentary orators. Here are assembled far more than the stipulated sixty claimants for seats, seated on each side the corridor...A ballot has to take place, trusty Inspector Denning presiding over the operation. He collects the orders, folds them, and drops them one by one into a glass bowl. Returning to the head of the corridor, Inspector Denning then stirs the papers in the bowl, and calls out the name of each visitor, whose order is duly inspected by Colonel Forester, another official of the House'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.