In 1925, the Boundary Hotel submitted some building plans to the Melbourne’s Licensing Court, including a proposal for a ‘ladies’ parlour’. The court’s response was blunt:

‘You can have the parlour, but to advertise it as a “Ladies’ Parlour” is… reprehensible.’ (Argus, 14 July 1925, p 14)

When asked to elaborate several days later, Melbourne’s Chief Licensing Inspector, Mr Calwell, said:

There are no ladies’ parlors in Collingwood, Fitzroy, Carlton or North Melbourne. Parlors exist in which women are served liquor, but none is specifically reserved for that purpose. Nor is there any in the city hotels. Ladies’ parlors are practically non-existent. As for wine shops, the licensees discourage as much as possible drinking by women…’¹

‘I have never,’ he added, ‘in my thirty-five years’ police experience seen an Australian woman drinking in an open bar.’ (Age, 18 July 1925, p 14)

Obviously, this was news to many, as the Inspector’s comments were reported in several newspapers, with The Age even adding a mischievous headline: “Ladies’ Parlors” Abolished!

The idea that pubs were no place for a woman had a long gestation, beginning with the Temperance movement in the 1880s. Organisations such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union argued that hotels were full of ‘vice’ and ‘moral danger’.² The presence of barmaids was also opposed on the basis that they frequently fell victim to ‘temptation’ and were only there as a ‘lure’ for men; to entice them to linger in hotels and drink excessively’.³

By 1884 the concern about barmaids was so great that the Victorian Royal Commission recommended that they be banned from working in hotels altogether. The ban did not eventuate, but debate about their presence continued.

With the advent of World War I, concerns around the evils of liquor reached fever pitch. A licencing system was introduced for Victoria’s barmaids, and hotels’ trading hours were reduced — initially, to 9.30pm, and then, one year later, to six o’clock.⁴

The impact of the latter was profound, as hoardes of workers rushed straight to the pub after work to drink their fill before six o’clock. Hotels and pubs were forced to renovate — removing pool tables, stages and dancefloors, in order to free up more room for the public bar. ⁵

Sydney barmaid Catherine Beatrice (‘Caddie’) Edmonds described the scene in her autobiography, Caddie:

It was a long time before I learned to handle that evening rush with any degree of skill. The first arrivals crowded against the counter, less fortunate ones called above their heads, late comers jostled and shouted and swore in an attempt to be served before closing time… We were all flat out serving… My head was splitting my feet were killing me…⁶

Women were excluded from public bars, and relegated to ‘lounge areas’ instead. These lounges were more genteel in appearance, and were open to both men and women. Often, they did not include a bar, with drinks being despatched through a servery or hatch instead. ⁷

It was thought that a lounge environment would encourage more civilised drinking,⁸ but Caddie’s vivid description of the scene at a Sydney hotel in 1924 suggests otherwise:

Apart from serving in the bar it was my job to look after the Ladies’ Parlour, two back rooms well away from the bar, specially fitted out with tables and chairs for those females who liked their drop. It was necessary to pass through the room nearest the street to enter the second which, lacking windows, was always musty and stifling. This latter I was to discover was, by some unwritten law, the special reserve of the older women who drank mainly wine and spirits, having reached the stage where nothing weaker could give them the necessary kick. ⁹

Caddie professed to feeling a sense of great shame about her profession as a barmaid, adding that ‘no woman who valued her reputation would have dared to put her nose… into a Ladies’ Parlour.’¹⁰

But despite their questionable reputation, by the late 1930s, ladies’ parlours — increasingly known as ladies’ lounges — were an increasingly common sight in Australian hotels. ¹¹ The Library’s newspapers and periodicals are peppered with examples, like this report on the opening of the new Carlton Hotel in Melbourne’s Bourke Street:

A feature has been made of the Ladies’ Lounge with coarse sand surface walls finished in warm cream tints and plaster ceiling with refined mouldings, through prism laylights in which a soft natural light is diffused. Chromium-plated chairs and armchairs… add to the comfort of this lounge. Ladies toilet opens from lounge with tiled floors and walls.¹²

In June 1940, the same journal reported on the opening of another new pub in Bourke St, the Hotel Devon. The ground floor of the hotel included a ‘public bar, two saloon bars, ladies’ lounge and bottle department.’ The ladies’ lounge had its own private entrance, and was ‘complete with its own toilet and powder room.’¹³

As the effects of World War II reverberated through Australian society, ladies’ lounges began to enter the mainstream. While men left their jobs to serve in the military, women stepped up to fill the breach, working in factories, offices, garages and shops.¹⁴

Eager to exercise their newfound economic independence, women increasingly went to hotels to drink.

For the next two decades, ladies’ lounges became a permanent fixture in many Australian pubs, until the emergence of feminism heralded their demise. Women demanded, and eventually won, the right to drink in public bars, and ladies’ lounges gradually disappeared from the landscape.

Since then, scholars’ reflections on the phenomenon of the ladies’ lounge have varied. Some have argued that the existence of the lounges was a form of social exclusion — ‘forcing’ women to drink in an inferior setting and pay a higher price for their drinks than the men. ¹⁵ Others have suggested that the ladies’ lounge was an important social outlet — a place where middle class women could have a drink and a chat while they ‘shelled the peas’ for dinner.¹⁶

Further reading

Caddie, 1975, Caddie, a Sydney barmaid: an autobiography written by herself; with an introduction by Dymphna Cusack, Sun Books, Melbourne

Kirkby, D, 1997, Barmaids: a history of women’s work in pubs, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK,

Wright, C, , 2003, ‘Doing the beans’: Women, drinking and community in the ladies’ lounge, Journal of Australian Studies, vol 76, pp 5-16

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References

1. The Library prefers the British spelling of the word ‘parlour’. However, where an historical newspaper has used the American spelling, we have retained the spelling for historical accuracy.
2. Summers, A, 2016, Damned Whores and God’s Police : the Colonisation of Women in Australia, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, NSW, p 502
3. Anon, 1884, Report on the employment of barmaids, J. Ferres, Govt Printer, Melbourne, Vic, p 4. See also Kirkby, D, 1997, Barmaids: a History of Women’s Work in Pubs, Cambridge University , Cambridge, p 93, 96
4. Harden, M, 2010, ‘Unique and deplorable: regulating drinking in Victoria,’ Meanjin, vol 69, no 3,p 55
5. Freeland, J M, 1977, The Australian Pub, Sun Books, Melbourne, p 148
6. Caddie, 1975, Caddie, a Sydney barmaid: an autobiography written by herself; with an introduction by Dymphna Cusack, Sun Books, Melbourne, p 4. Phillips, W, 1980, ‘ “Six o’clock swill: the introduction of early closing of hotel bars in Australia’, Historical Studies, vol 19, no 75, pp 250
7. Kirkby, Diane, 2005, ‘”Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”: Licensing Laws, Liquor Trading and the Maxwell Royal Commission in NSW 1951-3’, Australia & New Zealand Law & History E-Journal 9, p 119
8. As above p 120
9. Caddie, 1975, Caddie, a Sydney barmaid: an autobiography written by herself; with an introduction by Dymphna Cusack, Sun Books, Melbourne, p 4
10. As above, p 1
11. Kirkby, Diane, 2005,‘”Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”: Licensing Laws, Liquor Trading and the Maxwell Royal Commission in NSW 1951-3’, Australia & New Zealand Law & History E-Journal 9, p 119
12. ‘Carlton hotel’, Decoration and glass, vol 2 no 12 (1 April 1937) p 52
13. ‘Melbourne residential hotel the new Devon is planned on modern lines’, Decoration and glass, vol 6, no 2 (1 June 1940), p 21
14. Kirkby, D, 1997, Barmaids: a history of women’s work in pubs, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, p 164
15. Summers, A, Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonization of Women in Australia, Penguin, Ringwood,Vic, 1975, p 82
16. Wright, C, , 2003, ‘Doing the beans’: Women, drinking and community in the ladies’ lounge, Journal of Australian Studies, vol 76, pp 5-16