Saturday 20 June 2009

Glasgow to have barmaids

It's amazing what you can discover with an old brewing magazine and nothing to do.Yes, you guessed it. I'm still ploughing through "The brewers' Journal 1940".

I know that they had different licensing laws in Scotland. But I never realised that barmaids had been banned in Glasgow.

"Glasgow is to have barmaids again after an interval of fully thirty years.

The magistrates have, by nine votes to six, granted an application by the Licensed Trade for permission to employ barmaids, but have stipulated that women employed should be at least25 years of age.

They refused another application to be allowed to employ youths of of between 16 and 18 years of age as barmen.

Both applications were based on the plea that 50 per cent. of the barmen in the city wre serving with the Forces or were liable to be called up for service.

Temperance organisations opposed the applications on the ground that employment in public-houses was not suitable for women and was not in the interests of public morality.

It was also argued that the presence of women behind the bars might tempt young men into licensed premises and encourage them to drink.

Since the ban, however, the employment of barmaids in hotel, restaurant, and lounge bars has been permitted."
"The Brewers' Journal 1940" page 729.

I'd thought that the temperance lobby had been buggered by WW I. Evidently not. The bastards.

3 comments:

Barm said...

Scottish pubs have generally been rather more austere and male-dominated than English ones, and I dare say the stereotypical buxom barmaid is less closely associated with the idea of a pub than it is in England. Would such a ban have been politically possible south of the border?

Glasgow's licensing authorities are notoriously puritan even today. A year or two back they seriously proposed banning glassware in pubs and forcing the use of plastic glasses. This was ostensibly to reduce the incidence of assaults with glasses.

Tandleman said...

When I was a lad in Glasgow it was still seriously unusual to find a woman behind the bar unless she was the "cashier" sitting in a little booth, doling out the change for money brought to her by the male barstaff. That's a trdation that has died out too I suppose.

Rob Sterowski said...

Certainly has Tandleman, have never seen that at all.