When barmaids were banned

For 50 years, it was illegal for most women to serve alcohol in a pub. No, really. Will Harvie reports.

With the festivus season upon us, raise a glass to the barmaids who lost their jobs 108 years ago and probably never got them back.

For yes, New Zealand banned women from serving alcohol in 1910 and did not lift the restriction until 1961 – a 50-year hiatus that contributed to the 6 o’clock swill and anti-shouting laws.

It’s a weird and wonderful tale that stars Kate Sheppard and her allies, who have been justly celebrated this year to mark the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage.

Many know that Sheppard’s power base was the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Perhaps fewer remember that before organising petitions to get women the vote, the WCTU was organising petitions to ban women from serving alcohol in public houses.

In 1885, for example, the WCTU got 18,537 people to sign petitions asking Parliament to ‘‘forbid women to serve in any capacity in public houses’’, wrote Sue Upton in her 2013 book, Wanted, a Beautiful Barmaid: Women Behind the Bar in New Zealand, 1830-1976.

In 1887, another 15 similar petitions with more than 8000 signatures were presented to Parliament.

In both years, male MPs were unimpressed, despite these petitions being the largest presented to Parliament to that date and were only surpassed by the women’s vote petitions a few years later.

These failures to ban barmaids led directly to the franchise petitions, wrote Upton.

‘‘Parliament’s rejection of the 1887 barmaid petitions was the catalyst, what Kate Sheppard described as the ‘spark to the gunpowder’, for the WCTU to broaden their campaign into a fight for women’s franchise.’’

Much hard work was needed before women achieved the vote, in 1893, but it was another 17 years before women used their vote to ban other women from serving in pubs.

‘‘It seems so strange to us now,’’ Upton said in an interview.

Sheppard and the WCTU saw alcohol as dreadful.

They generally wanted full prohibition but it took years of campaigning, petitions, dry districts and the like . . . to ultimately fail. However, they managed to ban women from serving. The prohibitionists wanted to ban barmen, too, but couldn’t manage that.

The result was a double standard that treated men and women differently even as they did identical jobs. That said, you have to suspect the barmaids did more cleaning up than the men. Barmaid, by the way, was the word these women used, and proudly.

In campaigns leading up to the 1910 vote, ‘‘barmaids were alternately presented as ‘sirens who led men to drink’ and innocent maids at risk of moral degeneration’’, Upton wrote.

On November 12, 1910, a new Licensing Act outlawed women

servers. It came into effect on June 1, 1911.

But this was New Zealand and all sorts of exceptions were carved out. The rules also changed over the decades.

First, already-working barmaids were exempted, provided they were properly registered, and many weren’t.

Second, wives and daughters of male publicans were allowed to keep serving, especially in small country pubs. Again provided their paperwork was in order, which it often wasn’t. Sisters were later added to this select group,

Alcohol restrictions were mostly racheted up during World War I. A 1916 law made it illegal for women not related to the publican – or employed by him – to be in a bar. Women couldn’t even drink in pubs.

In the same year, new laws prohibited men from buying each other drinks. They couldn’t lend each other money for drinks either. This anti-shouting legislation hit the few barmaids still working because they were punished for failing to enforce it. As were barmen, to be fair.

Closing at 6pm was introduced in 1917 and made permanent in 1918. In time, this became the infamous 6 o’clock swill, in which men drank as much as possible after work and were then turfed out at 6pm.

Tables and chairs were removed from pubs and ‘‘vertical drinking’’ became the norm. ‘‘Women’s civilising influence’’ was gone, Upton wrote.

As the decades passed, some women found their way back into pub jobs. Servers could include mothers, grandmothers, aunts, stepdaughters, sort-of distant relatives, family friends and

Rose, who needed work after her nogood husband ran off with Agnes, the milliner’s assistant, last year – a made-up anecdote.

Obviously, some of these women were working illegally and authorities were looking the other way. A lot depended on the location and zeal of enforcement by local authorities. Women probably had it easier in small communities than large cities.

By the 1950s, more women were drinking in pubs as well. The mood of the nation was changing. The WCTU’s influence was leaking away.

And so, on December 1, 1961 – 57 years ago today – Parliament passed an amendment legalising barmaids.

The last restriction on women in pubs fell in 1976.

The past is a foreign country.

Wanted, a Beautiful Barmaid: Women Behind the Bar in New Zealand, 1830-1976, by Susan Upton, VUP, 240pp.

ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY, 6468505 ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY, 7014697 Before photos, cartoons were an important way to illustrate newspapers. The original caption to this one read, slightly amended: ‘‘Mrs Brown: Our political league is urging the Government to amend the licensing law so as to protect the young men from the barmaids. Mrs Jones: Oh, indeed. But don’t you think, dearest, that it would be more to the point to protect the barmaids from the young men?’’ Cartoon published in The Observer, July 25, 1903. An anti-Women’s Christian Temperance Union cartoon from The Observer, June 22, 1907. Note how the woman is depicted with an ugly beak and, in some crops, WCTU on her handbag.

ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY, 6951631 Man 1: My wife’s sense of smell is so keen that when I mentioned the word ‘‘whisky’’ during the day she noticed it on my breath when I got home. Man 2: Oh, come now. Man 1: I mentioned it to a barmaid. Caption amended. Originally published in The Observer, December 22, 1906.