Of public houses and private lives female hotelkeepers as domestic entrepreneurs∗

Abstract

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, women played a key role in the control and management of the Australian hotel industry. Their importance as publicans has often been overlooked by historians of drinking culture and the liquor trade, due to the representation of the pub as a male domain to which women were either socially peripheral or actively opposed. Rather, the complex spatial arrangements of the public house, where domestic and commercial activities were deeply interconnected, allowed many women the opportunity to earn a respectable and prominent living as hotelkeepers.

‘Ocker Sheilahs’ and ‘Bloody Barmaids’:Caddie,biography and gender history in 1970s Australian historical film

“…Many of them were married and had children. 68 Not all pubs were able to withstand the downturn in trade. Pubs in general were hard hit by the Depression: for example in the state of Victoria the number of licensed premises more than halved in the twelve years from 1920.…”