Towards a history of women in pubs in South Australia Towards a history of women in pubs in South Australia is a work in progress aimed at providing, for those who are interested, some useful, mostly quantitative resources and a few thoughts on the history of women in pubs in South Australia. Future posts will address the influence of women on pubs (from how women's votes might have determined the outcome of the various Local Option Polls to the domestication of pubs in the twentieth century); existing material will be updated whenever possible. Unless stated otherwise, the sources for the numeric data are the annual South Australian Statistical Registers, the occasional Statistical Summaries of South Australia from its Foundation..., and the more or less decennial South Australian and Commonwealth of Australia Censuses. My apologies for any transcribing or mathematical errors; some inaccuracies are also due to inconsistencies and possible typographical errors in the sources themselves. Other than casual users of these resources should consult the original documents. • • • Legislation etc

Advertising directed at women drinkers, 1960 [ULVA Hotel Gazette, March 1960]

No prohibition on women in pubs [The News, 1 September 1954, p.3] See also "He took a girl into a bar...", The News, 30 July 1952, p.2, attached. In South Australia, women have not been legally precluded from drinking in licensed premises. Since 1863 governments have restricted to whom publicans could serve liquor based on age or race or sobriety but, with several exceptions [see below], these prohibitions applied equally to men as to women. Some legislation facilitated if not encouraged women to go into pubs; for example, the Licensing Act of 1880 required for the first time that public houses have "decent and separate places of convenience for both males and females and urinals on or near to the premises for the use of customers... so as to prevent nuisances and offenses against decency". Similarly, although the minimum age at which liquor could be purchased has been legislated periodically since 1863, at no time have children been barred from pubs. Arguably, South Australian pubs have always been women- and family- tolerant if not -friendly. On the other hand, publicans were not legally required to sell or supply liquor to anyone, male or female. Until the South Australian Sex Discrimination Act of 1975, whether a publican served or refused to serve women was entirely at their discretion. If there was a 'ban' on women drinking in pubs in general, it was informal and 'cultural'. Nevertheless, from the early twentieth century, various governments imposed limitations on the rights of women as licensees, as barmaids and as patrons in South Australian pubs. The table linked below summarises the major South Australian legislation which applied to the roles of women in licensed premises from 1837 to 1967. The information was sourced from the Australasian Legal Information Institute databases, mostly historic South Australian Acts and Amendments. This project is a work in progress and the table will be updated as necessary. A summary of the major South Australian legislation related to women in public houses v1 April 2023 is freely downloadabe for private, non-commercial research. The list does not include laws on women's property rights (applicable to women as pub owners), on women's right to vote (and therefore their influence on local option polls, the occasional plebiscites which determined the number of pubs in a given area) or on industrial matters (related to working conditions and wages of hotel staff, including barmaids) and similar legislation that would be necessary for a comprehensive history of women in pubs in South Australia.

Ladies' Lounge, Alberton Hotel, c.1955 [South Australian Brewing Company archives]

Some exceptions As far as I have been able to determine, only one legal instrument explicitly and directly prohibited women from being in or consuming liquor in a pub in South Australia. The National Security (Supplementary) Regulations' "Liquor Control Amendment Order" of 6 August 1942 banned women under 21 from any premises in which liquor was served and women of any age from standing (!) in any area in which liquor was served within a pub; this regulation imposed penalties not only on the licensee but also on the women offenders. The Liquor Control Orders were revoked on 20 December 1945. Several other temporary bans and closures of pubs during and immediately after both World Wars applied to both men and women. Although not explicitly banning women customers from pubs, several laws almost certainly had that effect. The Licensed Victuallers' Act of 1863, for example, imposed penalties on licensees who allowed known prostitutes, presumably women, to be on their premises. By far the most restrictive regulations were introduced with the Licensing Act of 1908. This law did not directly prohibit women drinking in pubs, just in "bar-rooms" ie where alcoholic drinks were sold and served. The law required that, "unless the contrary is proved to the satisfaction of the Special Magistrate or Justices, any female being at, in, or about any bar-room" was deemed to be allowed "to sell, supply, or serve liquor" and therefore was required by law to be the wife or daughter or step-daughter of the licensee or to have been registered as a barmaid. The law did not explicitly preclude women from drinking in pubs. To avoid prosecution, publicans would have likely encouraged women customers to move to and to drink only in those areas - "ladies' lounges" - in which liquor could be consumed but was not actually sold or served. These provisions were not revoked until 1954. • • •

Women drinking in pubs: some possible numbers No contemporary sources provide even a rough estimate of the number of women - or men for that matter - who patronised South Australian pubs. However one possible indirect measure of the proportion of female customers and of the changes in women's drinking over the years is provided by the number of convictions for public or 'common' drunkenness (as opposed to drunk and disorderly or habitual drunkenness) published more or less annually from 1856 in the Statistical Register. A table outlining convictions for drunkenness in South Australia and related information is freely downloadabe for private, non-commercial research. If convictions for drunkenness were proportional to the number of drinkers who patronised pubs - and admittedly that's a very big 'if' - then, from 1907 to 1956 (the period for which this information was collected), women constituted an average of about 6% of drinkers in South Austraian pubs, ranging from about 18% in 1907 to less than 2% in 1945, 1951 and 1952. Over the same period the number of female convictions for drunkenness per 1000 females in the population averaged just under one per year, ranging from about 3 in 1913 to 0.2 in 1945 (and to an average of a little over 0.3 for 1946-1956). More instructive than the numbers themselves are the trends for both measures over the period, as shown in the graph below (click here or on the graph to enlarge). Ironically the number of women drinking in pubs was falling consistently since the First World War and for some time before, from 1932 until 1954, the most restrictive legislation discouraged women from drinking in bar-rooms. • • •

Women working in pubs The hotel trade represented genuine employment opportunities - as licensees or co-licensees, as barmaids or in some other service role - for women in South Australia. According to the admittedly patchy data available from the colonial and Commonwealth censuses from 1881 to 1961, women averaged 38.6% of all those engaged in hotel-related occupations such as licensees, bar-staff, cooks, waiting-staff, housekeepers and managers, laundry-workers, stable-hands, ostlers and boot-cleaners. Since these figures do not include the unpaid wives, daughters, sisters or mothers of licensees, the number and proportion would have been somewhat higher. As the graph below left (click to enlarge in separate window) shows, according to the censuses, from 26.6% (1881) to 50.2% (1911) of all those in hotel-related occupations were women; this was as high as 58% for women working in hotels in the City of Adelaide in 1961. The gender composition of pubs, it seems, is likely to have been much more complex and interesting than simply characterising pubs as "men's domains"; if the front bar belonged to men, the rest of the hotel, it seems, was women's. Another perspective into female employment in the hotels is provided by the ranking of occupations as reported in the South Australian colonial censuses, that is the order of occupations by the number of those employed (ie deriving a regular income) in them; this is shown in the table above right (click to enlarge in separate window). Although the ranking of hotel-related occupations based on the number of women employed as "inn- or hotel-keepers" or "inn- or hotel-servants" fell from sixth in 1861 to fourteenth in 1901, according to this data it remained in the top third of women's occupations and was notably higher than the equivalent rankings for males. Over the period and probably much longer, the hotel trade was one of the most significant employers of women, second only to general domestic service for unqualified women. Yet another perspective is the number of female employees per licensed premise. A very rough estimate is that from 1861 to 1961, the average number of female employees (that is excluding female licensees or unpaid wives or daughters of licensees) was just over 1 per pub. According to my convoluted calculations, it seems that in 1861 only every third pub employed female staff, in 1881 about half, in 1891 about three quarters and in 1901 all pubs employed an average of one female; by 1954, however, pubs employed an average of 3.0 female staff and in 1961 3.5. ► Licensees Until 1908 South Australian licensing legislation did not differentiate between male and female license holders. The Licensing Act of 1908 prohibited single women from holding a general publican's or wine license unless she was already a licensee or she was the owner or lessee of licensed premises. In 1915 this was extended to widows but was not applied to married women. Both of these restrictions were repealed in 1932. As shown elsewhere on this site, the first woman licensee in South Australia was Amelia Allen who licensed the Adelaide and Port Lincoln Hotel renamed Allen's Family Hotel, and in her own right from December 1839 to March 1841. Several other contenders for the first female publican include Sarah Chapman who was granted a license of the Joiner's Arms in Adelaide (on Morphett Street between Hindley Street and North Terrace) in March 1841 after her husband died in late November 1839 and probate was approved; she held the license only until she could lease the property in 1841. Similarly, in September 1840 the license for the Bricklayers' Arms in Hindmarsh (later the Black Lion in Richards Street) was transferred from William Bacon to Hannah Teakle who on 30 November 1840 married William Ring who in March 1841 renamed and re-licensed the hotel as "The Britannia" (Inn). Like Sarah Chapman, Hannah Teakle's short tenure as a licensee seems to have been more an expedient way of preserving the continuity of the license and of transferring the lease on the property than the start of a career as as 'landlady'. Significantly neither Chapman nor Teakle/Ring applied again for a publican's license. The second woman to hold a publican's license in her own right was Eliza Linn (nee Leggett) who in 1864 licensed the Lady Daly Inn on the Port Road in Hindmarsh; the following is offered for informational purposes on one of the most successful colonial women pub owners. Eliza Linn, founder, owner and first licensee of The Lady Daly in Hindmarsh Eliza Linn (1809-1884) inherited lot 18, on the corner of Port Road and Mary Street in Hindmarsh, after her husband died in 1856 and his soapmaking business had been wound up. The reason she chose to enter the hotel business is unknown, especially given the number of hotels already on the Port Road and elsewhere in Hindmarsh, but hints at a family connection in the trade. The hotel was built in 1863-64 and named the Lady Daly Hotel after the wife of Governor Sir Dominick Daly. The rate assessment book of that year described it as a "large, two-storey Public House and outbuildings", comprising nine rooms and with a rated value of £40. Unusually, possibly uniquely, the pub was constructed completely from locally made bricks. Ms Linn's successful application for a license in March 1864 was supported by numerous petitioners and there was no objection on account of her gender or that she had no husband. Eliza Linn continued to own the property until her death in 1884. The Lady Daly Hotel, c.1864 [SLSA PRG-37-10-75] Eliza Linn in 1875 [SLSA B-19985-16H] Since Amelia Allen in 1839, women have represented a significant minority of South Australian licensed publicans. In Down at the local Patricia Sumerling cites a Parliamentary debate in which it is estimated that women constituted about 25% of South Australian licensees in 1908. This is roughly consistent with the data from the colonial and Commonwealth censuses from 1861 to 1954 according to which there was an average of 149 licenses granted to women per year over the period, averaging 21.6% of all licensees. However, as shown in the graph below left (click to enlarge in separate window), based on available census data, there was significant variation, from just over 9% in 1876 to more than 35% in 1954. As an indicator of the 'quality' of women publicans, the number of convictions for breaches of the licensing legislation by female licensees from 1907 to 1956 averaged 59.5 per year or 9.6% of all convictions; see the graph above right (click to enlarge in separate window). Given that women represented an average of just over a fifth of all licensees, this is disproportionately very low. It seems that, in general, women licensees did indeed keep more orderly public houses. Such statistics as these provide only a basic and rough characterisation of women publicans in South Australia. Unfortunately more meaningful measures such as their aggregate tenures as licensees (the length of time that they held licenses) are not readily available. So too the number and tenure of women co-licensees or those, like Francis Hulbert of the Devon Arms and the Bristol Tavern who, although not a licensee of these pubs, was the real power "behind the bar". And so too again the number of women such as Ann Sims of the Kent Town Hotel or Margaret Pearson of the Avoca Hotel who owned pubs but at no time held a liquor license. Women and the United Licensed Victuallers' Association Although they comprised about a fifth of South Australian licensees from the 1860s to the 1960s, women seem to have played little if any direct part in the various publicans' organisations over that period - the original Licensed Victuallers's Association (c1841-1860s), later the Licensed Victuallers' Protection Association, the reconstituted South Australian Licensed Victuallers' Association (August 1871-February 1918), the United Licensed Victuallers' Association, South Australian Branch (Feb 1918-1959) and the Australian Hotels Association (from March 1959) - until at least the mid-1960s. So far, through an admittedly cursory survey of the ULVA(SA) and AHA(SA) publications until the mid-1960s, I have not been able to find a female office holder or committee/council member or even member of any of these organisations until 1959 and after that only as co-licensees with a male. From the 1930s the ULVA organised ad hoc 'Women's Committees' but these were tasked only with organising social events, flower arrangements and the like. Of course this gender disparity was not exclusive to licensees' organisations; it seems to have applied broadly, including to other hospitality-related organisations such as the Liquor Trade Employe[e]s' Association. A future posts will include, I hope, a list of women licensees including the pubs they managed and over what period, based on Reg Butler's list of South Australian publicans. • • • ► Other female hotel staff... As shown in the graph below, the average estimated proportion of wage-earning hotel female employees - housekeepers, housemaids, cooks, hotel laundresses, barmaids and the like - in the various censuses in South Australia between 1861 and 1954 was 39.6%, about 40%. This ranged from about 28% in 1861 to about 52% in 1933. Admittedly these figures are somewhat rough approximations and mostly calculated from the number employed in the broader 'hospitality' census class and not just the hotel industry. Nevertheless, for the three censuses in which female 'hotel servants' were actually enumerated (333 in 1881, 515 in 1891 and 1845 in 1954), the average proportion of female hotel employees across the state was 41.1% with the same ∓ 10% range; in the 'City of Adelaide' the proportion was significantly higher (54.7% in 1891) perhaps by as much as 20%. Forty percent seems to be, therefore, a reasonable if somewhat low estimated average for South Australia over the whole period, and closer to 50% from the 1930s and more than 60% in Adelaide pubs. What's more, despite a moral crusade against women working in pubs in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the proportion of female hotel employees seems to have increased over the period and was consistently above 40% of all hotel staff from about 1908, ironically the year in which the state regulated the employment of women as barmaids in South Australian licensed premises. ► ... and especially barmaids

The Barmaids of 1909? A list of the 391 women who applied for registration as barmaids in early 1909 is here. State Records also has a 'story from the archives' on barmaids (accessed June 2026). The SRSA catalogue entry for 'Applications to be registered as a barmaid under sections 149 and 150 of the "Licensing Act 1908"', (GRG67/50/00000/1) provides an 'official' list of names of applicants (set 'Show' to '500' for all 310 names of women included).

Although barmaids were the most controversial category of hotel-workers in South Australia from about 1870 to 1920, there seems to have been little attempt to 'characterise' them as a group, most basically to even guestimate their number historically. According to the only contemporary estimate that I have been able to find, cited in the debate on the Licensed Victuallers' Bill in October 1896 [Chronicle, 3 October 1896, p.2], there were 66 barmaids in Adelaide. However, by mandating the registration of barmaids, the Licensing Act of 1908 generated reasonably reliable data by which we can determine the number of barmaids working in March 1909, where they worked etc and to gain valuable insights into barmaids and the industry in late Edwardian South Australia. According to their applications for registration as barmaids, the registry itself and the South Australian Government Gazette, by the end of March 1909 some 391 women applied for certificates of registration as barmaids in South Australia; an updated list of these applicants is downloadable here. Of these, 62.0% were working in pubs in Adelaide in 1908-1909, 18.0% in suburban pubs, 11.8% in country pubs and 8.2% were either not currently employed, no pub was recorded or they had applied from interstate. Given the number of licensed premises in South Australia and Adelaide at the time, this means that there was an average of about 0.6 barmaids per hotel or club or railway refreshment rooms across South Australia, an average of 1.0 in the City of Adelaide and 0.3 for country premises. While it is tempting to extrapolate these figures back in time based on the earlier numbers of pubs, it is likely that the number of barmaids were very unevenly distributed not only geographically but also over time. Following Katherine Mullin's proposition that barmaids were an "essentially modern institution", it is arguable that 'barmaid' as an identifiable profession (and 'barman' for that matter) were the product of the 'industrialisation' of pubs: the shift from hotels principally as places of accommodation and public service up to the 1850s to places focussed on drinking and entertainment after the 1870s. So it is likely that the number of barmaids increased at a greater rate than the (female/working) population, especially from the 1870s. This is borne out by a cursory 'Trove' survey which shows a dramatic increase in the number of advertisements for publicans seeking barmaids and barmaids seeking employment from the mid 1870s. The first reference to a South Australian barmaid that I have been able to find is to an anonymous "barmaid of Mr [Edwin] Bird", "an Irish girl", at the Baker's Arms in Waymouth Street in November 1841 [Adelaide Independent and Cabinet of Amusement, 4 November 1841, p.2]. The first South Australian barmaid named in the public record appears to have been Elizabeth Cooper, "barmaid at [Bassingthwaite's] New Bush Inn" in Gawler in March 1849 [Adelaide Times, 12 March 1849, p.3]. Not much more is known of either of these two women; from the context of references above, it is likely that they were employed casually or temporarily rather than regularly to serve in bar-rooms. By the end of the 1850s, however, "barmaid" had become a full-time occupation for women in the hotel industry, separate from "housemaid" or "[female] hotel servant" and typically earning significantly more; "barmaid" was listed in the occasional "labour market reports" published by the likes of Hunt's Labour Office, an early private labour hire company [for example, Advertiser, 2 August 1858, p.2]. The apparent increase in the number of barmaids, their concentration in urban pubs and their "objectification" as a group coincided with the beginning in South Australia of the debate on the "barmaid question" in the pulpit and the press and in Parliament and which culminated in the regulation of barmaids in 1908. The real strength of the anti-barmaid movement - the struggle for the man [Norman Lindsay cartoon in The Bulletin, 13 July 1902 p.18; click to enlarge] The Barmaid Question - we are base enough to prefer it with a head like this [Detail of cartoon by 'HJW' in Adelaide Punch,1 August 1884 p.4; click to enlarge] • • • Attached is an updated list of the three hundred and ninety or so women who applied and/or were registered, under the Licensing Act of 1908, as barmaids. The list now includes: • the 'Liquid History' number (alphabetical list by surname) • the barmaid's surname • the barmaid's given names • the 'Reference' or 'Registration' number as recorded on their applications or in the Register, if approved • the licensed premise in which the applicant was reported as working in 1908 or early 1909, if known • the town or suburb of the licensed premise • the source of the information • the outcome of the application if known Barmaids/waitresses at the rebuilt Walkers Arms Tavern, Walkerville, c1974 Young, uniformed barmaids epitomised modernity in the new, fashionable suburban hotels from the 1970 as much as drive-in bottle departments, self-service food counters and mini-dresses. [SLSA South Australian Brewing Company Archives Acc3949]

• • • Posted: initially 15 May 2023, updated 29 February 2024, with correction 17 November 2024; last updated 11 June 2026 Original content © Craig Hill 2023, 2024, 2026.