BARMAIDS.

Waikato Times, Volume III, Issue 135, 20 March 1873, Page 2

BARMAIDS.

Thk following severe stricture on placing young giri*|l|f' bind bars of public-houses is suggested to the Nero TSr Herald by a " Barmaid Show " which took place in London :— "The barmaid ia the agent of the publican ilft « dispensing beer. She (for the sex ii female) is a bediMO«l creature, a frivolous creature, a hard- worked creature, whose duty it is to stand behind the bar of liquor «tore» and pump beer for the multitude, receiving in exchange th# J pennies for the landlord and all the maudlin stuff which fl men are capable of uttering in a woman's ears for htr owil H shnre. How shocking this tnuit be at times can be calculated by the ratio in which drinking induces immoralitie* to bubble filthily from lewd lips. This is her lot year and year out ; and what wonder if she is generally weak in the end and something to-be hidden away from the eye of day. It is in fact a huge school of gradual debauchery for women, from whose depths a favoured few. a very few, can escape. Amid the blaze of the tiwdry gin-palace sho drinks in the infection in the air ; perhaps she aasists in the process by draughts from the brandy keg, at first to put a flash in her eyes, at last as a necessity of feverish ex- fc istence. The barmaid is generally a physical attraction, and chosen for her points by the landlord as one would choose a horse. She must keep up this appearance, and cultivate slang as another portion of her stock-in-trade. The refined taste which in England demands this sad exhibition of womanhood haa, however, of late, gone a step further, and got together an exhibition of this very class* [ Fifty flashy girls were act behind fifty bars in a place on I the suburbs of London, and the British public were invited to come and guzzle beer, and in guzzling to note their fancy by dropping a ballot in her favour. A prize of a gold watch> . was to be the guerdon of her who took the most monejl^" and received the largest number of votes. And the British public came in it, thousands to swill, to talk slang, to guzzler * dan to rote that fifty girls might be booked a> surely for perdition as their nonsense could inspire. But then to look beyond and observe the thousands of barmaids in London longing for and enjoying the fame. of Miss Somebody, who could pump so much more beer, look so much prettier, or so much faster, and talk so much slang ! It is safe to say that nothing more deiroralizing than this system exists in any country, w bother for the luckless girls thein6elves or for the silly youth, or sillier Tien whom these beauties of ™ the bepr barrel so often lure into dishonesty and crime by only listening to and smiling at their inanity and hinted or open indecency of nonversation. It u a process which ha* its revenge on both sides, for the bedizened barmaid is hold < in the toils ahe has drawn around her admirers." j

The most beautiful mai betlie most admired, and cireseod, but 11»t are nut nlwin- ihv uifft e-tecmoil and \o\qJl.