Elizabeth J Magie (1866 – 1948)

I’ve always had a love hate relationship with that board game that is trotted out when families and friends gather, Monopoly. On the one hand, it is enjoyable, engaging and can keep everyone entertained for several hours. On the other hand, for someone with socialist leanings, it disturbs me that it seems to bring out the worst features of a grasping capitalist out in many of the game’s participants. 

Elizabeth Magie, known to her friends and family as Lizzie, was from Scottish immigrant stock, living in Prince George’s county in Washington D.C at the turn of the 20^th century. She was known for her progressive political views and was looking for a way to bring her concerns about the economic impact of the monopoly on land and property owners on the common folk to a wider audience. At the time board games were becoming increasingly popular amongst middle class families and this seemed to be the best medium to spread her message.

What Lizzie developed was a game called the Landlord’s Game, designed, as she said, as “a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences…contain[ing] all the elements of success and failure in the real world”.

The elements of the game will be familiar to many readers, players progressed around the outer rim of a board, receiving $100 every time they passed the Mother Earth space and going to jail if they trespassed on land. Properties were available to buy and then collect rents from. Those unfortunate enough to run out of money were sent to the Poor House. There were two sets of rules; one which rewarded all players when wealth was created and one where the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents.

Satisfied with her game, Lizzie applied for and was granted a US Patent (no 748,626) on January 5, 1904. The Landlord’s Game gained some popularity with intellectuals and university campuses (the two are often mutually exclusive, I find) and was revised and improved over time. In 1924, recognising that her patent had expired and that she needed to re-establish her ownership of the game, Lizzie applied for and was granted another patent (no 1,509,312).

It is now time for Charles Darrow to enter our story.

In late 1932, Charles, unemployed and desperate for money, was introduced to a property board game by Philadelphia businessman, Charles Todd. Darrow was taken by the game and saw an opportunity to make some money, initially hand-producing the game which he called Monopoly and then a printed version, obtaining a copyright for it in 1933.  

Sales of the game were so promising in the run up to Christmas 1934 that Parker Brothers, now part of Hasbro, approached Darrow and, on March 18, 1935, bought the game, the remains of Darrow’s stock and helped him to secure a patent. But a month later Parker Brothers became suspicious of Darrow’s claims that he was the sole inventor of the game and, in a smart move, approached Lizzie to buy the patent for her Landlord’s game and a couple of other games she had created. They proposed to her a payment of $500, which she accepted, but they did not offer her a share of the royalties.

At the time, Lizzie didn’t smell a rat, even writing to the treasurer of Parker Brothers that when the prototype of her game arrived, she had a song in heart”. But in January 1936 her mood changed. The Washington Evening Star carried a picture of her holding a board from her Landlord’s Game and one from a game called Monopoly. The similarities were striking, as they would be. She was angry, steadfast in her belief that Parker Brothers had stolen her best-seller of an idea.

 A best seller it was too, taking off in the States and becoming an international favourite. Darrow, who had a slice of the royalties, made millions from the game. When asked by the Germantown Bulletin how he came to invent such a wildfire success, Darrow replied, somewhat ingenuously, “it’s a freak…entirely unexpected and illogical”.

Lizzie’s role in developing the game was effectively airbrushed out of history. When she died in 1948, a widow with no children, neither her obituary nor her tombstone bore any reference to her role in developing one of the world’s best-known games. The website of Hasbro, ironically named for the eighth year in succession in 2019 as one of the world’s most ethical companies by the Ethisphere Institute, is silent on her contribution.

There matters would have remained but for an American economics professor from San Francisco University, Ralph Anspach. In 1974 he launched a game called Anti-Monopoly and was immediately sued by Parker Brothers for breach of copyright. In preparing his defence, Anspach uncovered the history of the Landlord’s Game, Lizzie’s role in developing it, and how Darrow had been economical with the actualité in explaining his how he had come across Monopoly. After a ten-year legal battle, Anspach prevailed and Lizzie has now begun to receive the credit she deserved, at least in some circles.

If you enjoyed this, look out for Martin Fone’s new book, The Fickle Finger, which will be published in April 2020. For details follow this link https://martinfone.wordpress.com/the-fickle-finger/

In the meantime, to get your fix of unfortunate inventors, try Fifty Clever Bastards by Martin Fone, details of which are here https://martinfone.wordpress.com/fifty-clever-bastards/