WOMEN TOPERS

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9040, 5 March 1908, Page 4

WOMEN TOPERS

Sub-Inspector Gordon, of the Auckland Police, has provided the Licensing Committee and the public generally with some very unpleasant information affording food for serious reflection. It is to the effect that the drinking habit among women has become very accentuated in the suburban districts of the Northern city. The women visitors to the suburban hotels, said the Sub-Inspector, were mostly well-dressed and of respectable appearance, and were not infrequently accompanied by young girls and children. In seven hotels visited on one night no fewer than fifty-five women, who have five children with them, were found drinking. In some of the hotels rooms were specially marked "for ladies only." The SubInspector said that he mentioned the matter in the hope that the committee might suggest some means to prevent the evil spreading. It is- not reported that the committee made any suggestion. Probably they were unable to do so. Women have as giood a legal right to drink in a Intel as men, but it would be a sad thing for the community if they widely exercised it. It is difficult in' these days of equality of the sexes. to see how even the law could prevent them from frequenting public houses without forbidding men also. If something could be done-to punish the hotelkeepers who specially enourage women visitors to their drinking rooms, it might perhaps check the evil to some extent. It is men of that stamp who do more to aid thu prohibition movement than the prohibition organisations, and it would pay the owners of hotel property to sweep lessees of this character out of their premises. It is to be hoped that the evil exposed in connection with Auckland suburban hotels does not extend in as serious a degree to other parts of the dominion.