DRINK IN HOTEL LOUNGES

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23589, 17 March 1942, Page 4

DRINK IN HOTEL LOUNGES

—♦ — SERVICE TO WOMEN RESTRICTED AUCKLAND CLERGYMAN’S COMMENT (P.S.S.) AUCKLAND, March 16. The right of every free citizen of New Zealand to drink ale, wine, or spirits if he or she desired, but the need for all who did so to drink with decency and temperateness, were points emphasised by Canoh R. G. Coats in a sermon at St. Matthew’s Church on Sunday evening. Canon Coats dealt with the campaign in Auckland for the observance of the licensing laws, and said he had refused to ally, himself with any organisation which took a fanatical stand against things which injured humanity. Canon Coats referred to the restrictions placed upon the serving of liquor to women both in what were known as women’s bars and also in hotel lounges. “Flappers went into the lounges, of the hotels’between 5 and 6 o’clock and were treated by those boys, who are drawing so much a week and cannot even pay their mothers their board, because they are entertaining girls in the lounges, but from yesterday that hgs come to an end," he said. “There is not a girl in Remuera or a girl in Freeman’s Bay who can get one spot of liquor in any hotel in this city after 5 o'clock. “A woman’s duty after 5 o’clock is in her home. ‘Mrs Smith' has an equal right with ‘Mrs Vere de Vere’ who has a housemaid and a cook to wait upon her. Why should she go to a hotel lounge and drink cocktails until 6 o’clock, while ‘Mrs Smith,’ who has been scrubbing out offices, cannot have drink because the women’s bars are closed?’’