Adelaide hotels thrive despite temperance and political pressure in 19th/20th centuries on effects of alcohol
The Beresford Arms, built in Gilles Street, Adelaide, in 1839, is the oldest intact hotel structure in South Australia.
Adelaide is as much a City of Pubs as a City of Churches. The battle between them over alcohol drink was a constant from the start of South Australian colony and well into the 20th Century. The start of the 20th Century was dominated by teetotal premiers Tom Price (1905-09), John Verran (1910-12), Archibald Peake (1912-20) followed by the long term of Tom Playford (1938-65).
A major political achievement of the 19th Century – getting votes for women – was closely aligned to the goal of combating alcohol-related problems and protecting women and children in the home and in the workplace.
A measure for the “Granting of Licences, regulating the sale of Wine, Beer, and Spirituous Liquors, for the Prevention of Drunkenness, and the Promotion of Good Order in Public Houses” was the fourth law in the new colony in 1837.
The Edinburgh Castle in Currie Street, Adelaide, retains South Australia’s oldest hotel licence (1837). The oldest intact hotel structure is the former Beresford Arms in Gilles Street, built in 1839.
About 1300 general hotel licences have been issued since 1837 and in 2001 there were about 655 hotels within the state. Pubs within the city of Adelaide fell from 128 in 1915 to about 60 in 2001.
From the 1850s, pub facades began to resemble shopfronts, but interiors changed little until the late 1860s when the licensing bench demanded minimal sizes and numbers of rooms. Pub styles reached their zenith between the late 1870s and 1910, when most pre-1860 pubs were rebuilt or replaced. Usually Italianate, with shady balconies and verandahs with balustrades of ornate cast iron, these hotels contributed significantly to Adelaide’s townscape.
On major transport routes, in new towns, at river crossings, major junctions, mining and railway towns, ports and seasides, pubs were often the first business in a new township and the last to close when a town was abandoned. They were venues for religious worship, theatre, meetings small and large, public and private, balls, banquets, fetes and sporting events, and have been used as school classrooms, commercial rooms for travelling salesmen, electoral polling places and for inquests.
