- Police/Fire - Janesville Sesquicentennial
-
- 1940s law aimed at lady barflys
- Over the years, tavern and cocktail lounge owners have advertised
"Ladies Nights," offering
- reduced-price drinks as an attraction to get women to frequent
their establishments.
- But tavernkeepers weren't always so anxious to attract female
business. The reason?
- Between 1947 and 1948 the city had an ordinance designed
which made it a violation for a
- tavernkeeper to allow women to sit or stand at the bar.
- The ordinance did, however, provide that drinks could be
served to a woman at a table in the
- tavern. She had to remain seated and the drink had to be
carried over to the table by a man in her company or a tavern
employee.
- The law, adopted in 1947 and effective by 1948, also stipulated
that signs be posted in the bar,
- stating that it was forbidden for any woman to join the men
at the rail.
- If the bar had no table or if the women had no one to buy
them a drink, the ladies were out of luck.
- The Milwaukee Sentinel said in a Feb. 1, 1948, news article
that the ordinance in the city boasting
- of 25,000 people and 40 bars had solved the woman barfly
problem.
- "Ladies are served only at tables," the writer
said, and predicted that the rigid new law undoubtedly
- would serve as a good example for other cities in the state.
- Though the law invoked considerable debate from members of
the Tavern League, the Sentinel
- article quoted an employee of Grant's Tap Room in the Commercial
Hotel, Academy Street near Centerway, as saying: "It's a
good idea. Women don't belong in bars."
- Signs forbidding women to sit or stand at the bar were taken
down Sept. 8, 1958, after an attorney
- appeared before the common council to represent the Tavern
League.
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