MONOPOLY, as we all know it, was developed in the 1934 by the late Charles B. Darrow of Germantown, Philadelphia, U.S.A. Born in 1889, he died in 1967 a millionaire. Well, that is true, but Charlse Darrow did not invent MONOPOLY, he mass produced it before selling it to Parker Bros. in 1935

In 1903 Elizabeth Maggie (soon to be Phillips) designed a board game called "The Landlords Game" which was developed as a learning tool. The game was played on a board made up of 40 spaces arranged ten per side. The four corner squares were Mother Earth collect $100, Goal, Public Park, and Go To Goal. In the center space on each side of the board was a railroad. The rest of the spaces consisted of properties to be purchased and fines that had to be paid. The game was granted its patent a year later with production starting two years later. Most of the games were handmade and most players changed the names to local ones (sounds familiar with the new versions). But the patent expired in 1921 and she made changes to the game over the past twenty years, but was granted a new patent in 1924. This game had two sets of rules and one set was similar to today's MONOPOLY rules.

Eventually a lady called Ruth Hoskins took the game to Atlantic City when she moved there where she played it with friends and changed the names of the properties to Atlantic City street names. A man called James Raiford had lots to do with the changes and this version was known as Monopoly.

James Raiford taught the game of Monopoly to Charles Todd who had grown up with Charles Darrow's future wife, Esther. When the Darrow's were invited to Todd's house, they played Monopoly and Charles Darrow fell in love with the game. He asked Todd for a copy of the rules which Todd's secretary typed up for him. Apparantly Darrow and Todd never spoke to each other again.

Darrow knew he was onto something good, so he started making games by hand changing the rules slightly and got the copyrighted and then added colour stripes to the properties and some cartoon pictures.

Demand increased and he could not keep up, so in he got help from a printer (Patterson and White). The first 1000 games are known as the Darrow White Box Edition.

Demand was still too much so he contacted both Milton Brfadley and Parker Bros., but they both turned him down, so he ordered 5900 more games from Patterson and White. but the retailers said the box were too big so the sets were put into a small black box and a separate board. These are known as the Darrow Black Box Edition.

The game sells well and news of the success reaches the executives of Parker Brothers and the company then buys the game from Charles B. Darrow (which in fact is not really his to sell.

Eventually Parker Bros. bought the still standing patent from Lizzie Phillips for $500 and to make some of her games. They also bought out the other few individuals as well. All this was done very quietly and low key. Charles B. Darrow retires a millionaire at the age of 46. Hasbro now own Parker Brothers and MONOPOLY is still being made with new versions every year. Parker Brothers were just about coping with domestic orders but demand was increasing from outside the United States.

In early 1935, Parker Brothers sent Waddingtons in the United Kingdom a sample of MONOPOLY. Waddingtons (John Waddington Ltd.) started out as printers, but was starting to branch out into packaging and had started a small playing card division. Because Waddingtons had sent Parker Brothers the card game Lexicon with a view of publishing it, Parker Brothers immediately thought of Waddingtons.

The head of Waddingtons, Victor Watson senior, handed the MONOPOLY set to his son, Norman asking him to "look this over and tell me what you think of it." Norman played an imaginary game with himself all weekend and on the Monday morning persuaded his father to telephone Parker Brothers.

This was the first transatlantic telephone call ever made by Waddingtons and the first ever received by Parker Brothers from Europe. This telephone call resulted in Parker Brothers granting John Waddington Ltd. a license to manufacture MONOPOLY. Before putting the game into production, Waddingtons decided to change the names of the properties to give the game more appeal in the United Kingdom.

Victor Watson asked his secretary, Marjory Phillips to take a walk around London "to get the right names". Therefore the railroads became stations, the dollars became pounds and British landmarks and streets were used. There were no other alterations.

Nowadays, there are versions all over the world and this site hopes to show you most of them (eventually!).

In the 1980's Waddington's exported the British version around the world to many countries. These days, Parker Bros. (now part of Hasbro) prints the bulk of European / World MONOPOLY sets in Ireland.

For a more detailed history of the American Side of MONOPOLY then please visit my friends site.