ABSTRACT
We all know what a ticket is: a small piece of printed paper, proof we are entitled entrance, or to a good or service. But since when did this become pervasive? In Britain, the Eighteenth Century saw the widespread use of tickets. Understandably, the public had to adjust to the idea that a small slip of paper could represent clothing left at a check-in counter, a pawned object, the right to have a free pauper’s meal or to leave an institution, wages, a journey, or access to a game or a meeting. A ticket may even represent a person, as a visiting card was also called a ticket. The British Museum admitted visitors by ticket from 1759, but because access to anyone willing to pay an entry fee was more democratic than the Museum wanted to be, a complicated vetting system determined who could purchase these tickets. The ticket had really arrived in 1821, when Queen Caroline was refused entrance to the Westminster Cathedral coronation ceremony of George iv, her estranged husband, on the ground that she could not produce a ticket.
