February 2020 Licence Update

Small enough list of changes this month, but all on the interesting end of the scale:

Removals

1009700 The Snug, Stephen Street. Don't take this as a certainty that its closed for good, however.

Returns

N0189 H Mathews, Benburb Street

N1107 Coffeys, Emmet Road. Both of these are returned in the name of a receiver and are probably only to make the licence saleable, but it is possible this isn't the case.

Six Day & Early Closing

The Background

I've previously written about the set of different licences that can be hold by what I consider to be a pub; and how that may, inconsistently, not be agreed with by others; but there are a few other types which are not currently represented in Dublin which I would allow - and three of which really can't be disputed.

Ignoring the currently completely unused Omnibus Station Licence, which was created for and used for Busaras's former bar; the categories I'm going to cover here are the Six Day and Early Closing categories of licences. The Early Closing bit requires pubs to close an hour earlier than otherwise, with the Six Day bit being the same as applied to all pubs in Northern Ireland until 1987 - that pubs could not open on Sundays; with the potential to have both of these applied at the same time.

At the time I wrote that list of licences, there was a single Six Day licence in Dublin - N0355 for the closed refreshments bar in the Four Courts - but this has not (yet) been renewed for 2020/2021. There have been no Six Day & Early Closing or Early Closing licences in Dublin in the time I've been able to obtain files from Revenue. However, these certainly have existed here.

The Beginning

A relic of another era, 6 day licences were introduced via the Licencing Act, 1872; as an option for the applicant. They were understandably cheaper - priced at 6/7ths of the normal licence duty - but you would need to have very poor or no Sunday trade for this to make a difference; so presumably it was intended as a money-saving measure for those who already did not open on a Sunday for their own, undoubtedly religious, reasons.

Early closing licences, and the option for having both restrictions, were introduced shortly after by the Licencing Act, 1874 with a saving of 1/7th of the licence duty available for taking this, or 2/7ths for both restrictions. For some very specific publicans, trade in the last hour may have been quiet enough - or non-existent, if they closed earlier - that this saving may have been worthwhile, but I suspect this was a rare reason for applying - at least initially.

From newspaper reportage of court proceedings, it would appear that in the bulk of cases, each type of licence was effectively imposed on an applicant by the local magistrate, either directly or by virtue of being known to refuse 7 Day Ordinary licences. Potentially, they were used as a form of probationary (in the new hire, not punishment sense) service, as many relatively new premises are seen applying to remove one or both restrictions a few years later.

Reasons for magistrates requiring either/both restrictions are rarely given, but it is clear from court reportage that many prospective publicans applied for a 6-day on the assumption that it would be more likely to be granted; and at least one case of it being effectively a punishment - a 6 day granted after a 7 day was stripped. This happened in Armagh, but obviously pre-1902 is also pre-1922, so the same legal system applied.

Reports of specific magistrates refusing to transfer a licence (e.g. on sale or death) unless it was downgraded to 6 day also occur - this piece stating that whether there was any legal basis for this was to be investigated

Freemans Journal, July 16th 1875

Those who found themselves with a 6 day licence when they actually wanted a 7 day licence could find it extremely difficult to convince a magistrate - who may have been the one who imposed it - to change. Magistrates may have attempted to cut this off in advance, but it didn't always stop attempts as this 1899 report on a request to convert a 6 day to 7 day on what is now N0076 The Berkeley (with a 7 day licence!) shows.

Freemans Journal, October 12th 1899

Some agreements to change a 6 day to 7 day included an agreement to surrender a 7 day licence from another pub - effectively preshadowing the modern era of how all licences are moved.

Outside of Dublin - and the cities of Belfast, Cork, Limerick and Waterford - the sale of alcohol on Sundays at all was banned in 1878, under the Sale of Liquors on Sunday (Ireland) Act; meaning that it was entirely sensible to apply for a 6 day licence and save the 1/7th duty. This ban lasted until 1927.

The End Of The Beginning

The last of these licences were issued new prior to the 1902 licencing changes; but then again this applies to *all* licences except a very limited set of categories which have been added since. They have, as with all Publican class licences, remained transferrable within the restrictions of whatever conditions were in force at the time; but I do not believe that any additional licences of either type have been created by conversion from a Seven Day Ordinary since 1902.

The Decline

So, how are there so few of them left?

In Dublin, a major reason for sale of Seven Day Ordinary licences in overcrowded or declining areas from 1902 on until roughly the 1930s, was so that the holder of a 6 day and/or early closing licence could transfer this licence to their premises and extinguish the less useful licence. This would have appealed to the attitude of certain court officials of the time who wished to reduced the total number of licences - one notable case not involving restricted licence was The Gresham and Wynns Hotels being instructed to buy a licence on Marlborough Street between them; and present it for cancellation in return for being allowed alter their own licences. 

That many of the 6 day licences in question were created to satisfy a whim of a past generation of court officials, and were now being swapped out for 7 day licences to satisfy another whim does seem to present some irony.

Nationally, the Intoxicating Liquor (Ireland) Act, 1906 introduced 10pm (cities/towns) / 9pm (rural) closing on Saturdays for all pubs. This meant that Early Closing licence holders now had to close at 9pm - or even 8pm - on a busy trading day, which would have provided a specific incentive to change to a non-restricted licence. This Act was repealed in full in 1927, returning Saturdays to their normal opening hours.

Revenue allowed for conversion of these licences to full for a cash payment, but without cancelling another licence, during at least two periods - 1960-2 for £200; and again in 2000 for £2,500. The 2000 offer included restrictions on selling the licence for a period, however.

Update insert: The 1960-2 conversion fees were put in to an investment fund, intended to fund alcohol awareness and alcoholism supports. This made occasional disbursements, mainly to fund specific ad campaigns, and was eventually wound up in 2009, returning about €300k to the Department of Health at the time.

Revenue only provide full licence registers back to 2010; but they provide a statistical report every year from 1996 to 2012; which also contains the two previous years, although some of the figures show cliff-edge drops or massive jumps year-on-year, which would be rather suspicious, even given that licences can 'go missing' for a few years even on current registers. These figures are national, not Dublin-specific

1994 - 9 six day, 631 early closing, 36 both
1995 - 78, 46, 25
1996 - 36, 25, 26
1997 - 57, 17, 28
1998 - 62, 20, 19
1999 - 61, 14, 18
2000 - 37, 1, 7
2001 - 22, 1, 8
2002 - 14, 4, 8
2003 - 11, 2, 5
2004 - 7, 6, 5
2005 - 7, 0, 5
(The figures continue much the same to 2012)

The impact of the 2000 conversion offer is notable, and assuming the exceptionally strange 1994 figures to be inaccurate, the only significant deviation from a slowly declining trend. The question must be asked - why did anyone retain their old type at all after 2000?

The End?

These licences were to be abolished, by automatic conversion to the 7 Day Ordinary, were the Intoxicating Liquor Bill 2005 to be enacted in to law. This Bill, generally remembered as the "Cafe Bar Bill", was rejected due to mass opposition to it allowing holders of Wine Retailers On Licences to sell other drinks without food - current rules allow them to only sell wine without food, beer with food and no spirits; but there is an entire future article in that debacle!

Despite England & Wales having a different licencing structure even pre-Independence, they also had 6 day and early closing licences, but it appears that these restrictions can be removed on request without charge since 1964 (section 65 subsection III)

I would hazard a guess that any future modernisation of licencing will automatically convert these to 7 Day Ordinary, and also that the last of type in Dublin - the Four Courts one - will not be further renewed

Updated extra stats:

Via the Oireachtas Library I have found scanned copies of similar statistical data as given from Revenue above:

1992 21 six day, 54 early closing, 26 both
1991 61, 4, 137 (I'm fairly certain this has the 6 day / 6 day early closing figures backwards)
1990 139, 3, 48
1989 164, 3, 63
1988 201, 4, 51
1987 204, 4, 59
1986 183, 3, 60
1985 208, 6, 61

The figures are not broken out prior to this, as far as I can see.

Updated Dublin stats:

A 1942 Parliamentary Question provided a figure of 16 six-day licences left in Dublin City, and 10 further in Dublin County.

January 2021 Licence Update

 Not a lot this month (says he for the tenth month in a row...); but what's there is still interesting

Additions

1017068 RascalsHQ, Inchicore - a licence type change for the formerly restaurant, now pub/off licence at the Rascals Brewery

update: I had missed this in my original comparison

Removals:

1011470 Scruffy Murphys, Powers Court - this may yet reappear as there is a hotel proposal for this site. Had long since closed.

A Perfect Level of Detail - Goad Fire Maps

I'd always hoped that I'd stumble across a map of Dublin with every pub marked on it as such, preferably with its trading name and as many possible details as you can fit on a map. 

While the OSI 25":1 Mile series maps from the turn of the last century do, occasionally, mark pubs and provide a trading name in certain areas of Dublin - particularly outer suburbia such as this long gone pub in Whitehall...

Image sourced from geohive.ie. Original map is now Public Domain

...They do not provide much coverage in the city centre, which is where the majority of pubs that no longer exist are.

However, a post by BeerFoodTravel last month on the Dublin Hop Stout Brewery featured the Goad Fire Maps of Dublin, which appeared to show extremely high detail of what individual buildings in Dublin city centre were at the time of the maps printing (1893). High quality scans of these maps exist on the British Library website; covering Dublin, Cork and Limerick; covering core industrial and retail areas of each city.

These are the first maps I have found that explicitly mark pubs and hotels accurately as such; and unlike Thoms Directories of the time - and up to the 1950s - there is no use of euphemism - "Spirit Merchant" etc - and no recording of places with inappropriate licences for on-sales either. In some areas of the city, the volume of pubs recorded at the time reaches almost unimaginable levels; and often more than I had recorded

Goad Map extract of the corner of Commons Street and North Wall Quay in 1893 via British Library. Original map is now Public Domain

1893 is nine years prior to the start of my era of interest, but pubs are relatively static items. Scanning over the many maps available has given me a list of about 60 premises to investigate; in the form of premises marked as pubs or hotels which I did not previously have any entry for. 

I've worked to verify the first fifteen so far, and have added six pins to the map - and most of the remaining ones may yet be added after some further Thoms research when the DCLA reopens; although Dublin did feature many Temperance Hotels in that era. 

One premises has turned up as being a tied house of the Mountjoy Brewery, not something I was aware that they ever had; and further information to go against the idea that Dublin did not have tied houses, something I have written on in the past.

December 2020 Licence Update

Physically huge file update to work through - over 200 licences renewed since last month, particularly in the North City area which could suggest a delay in a specific court; but very little in the way of substantive changes

New:

1016097 Mackenzies, Hanover Quay - Press Up venue that opened about a year ago! 

Unions, Pickets and High Court Judgements - Women behind the Bar

Women have a long traditional of working in, and indeed owning pubs in Ireland, going back to the on-site sales of the brews of alewives from homes across the country.

And there is plenty of scholarly writing on the role of women in brewing and retail of alcohol during this period, including a fine blog on the topic by a Trinity PhD. Specifically for Dublin, there is this piece for a historical journal covering 17th Century female brewers and alehouses.

Some of my own personal interest in pub history comes from a woman running a pub, via genealogy, with the mother of my great-grandfather's third wife ("great great grandmother", while inaccurate, is easier to write) having operated N0105 The Deers Head in the 1910s; claiming successfully for £5 11s7d damages caused to the premises during the Rising

However, it isn't even fifty years since women working behind the bar - or on the floor - of pubs became accepted in Dublin's unionised pubs. The term used during the period where this was debated was "barmaid", which is what I will use in this post - although I don't think its particularly appropriate in the modern era.

Distilled down, there were two factors in the push against barmaids - misguided concern for their health from working in an 'unsuitable environment for women'; and pure sexism, attempting to protect jobs for men only. However, possibly due to how many women actually owned pubs in Ireland, only the latter ever really crops up here.

While Irish licencing laws were separate from those in Britain even prior to Independence, the situation in British law is worth looking at, and with a particularly Irish tinge to what happened 

There was a "Joint Committee on the Employment of Barmaids" which reported to the British Government in 1905, recommending that they be banned entirely. Interestingly, a review of this report in The Economic Review in 1906 claimed that "The custom of employing women as barmaids is practically unknown in Scotland and Ireland"

Various Bills attempting to bring in such a ban, either allowing existing barmaids to continue working, or throwing the claimed 100,000 of them in employment in England and Wales at the time out of their jobs, were floated after this report up until the 1908 Licensing Bill, but were dropped. A significant element in this was the formation of the Barmaids Political Defence League by Eva Gore-Booth - the sister of Constance Marcievicz - and their temporary disruption of the political rise of Winston Churchill in the process. 

This defeat didn't stop later suggestions to bring in such a ban, on ever more spurious grounds, though, this being from 1930

So, with no prohibition on women working in the trade in Ireland, a long tradition of them doing so and female owned pubs around the country, were there many barmaids in Dublin? Apparently not

Irish Press, December 17th, 1962

With newspaper journalists of that era often being heavy drinkers, it is likely that they would be quite able to answer that question themselves!

There was a reason for this however - Dublin's then strong barmans union (the Irish National Union of Vintners', Grocers' and Allied Trades Assistants - now part of MANDATE) prohibited the employment of women in unionised pubs, and the majority of Dublins pubs were unionised. Most non-union pubs were smaller, family operated premises with the larger and busier pubs that made up most of the volume of the trade, and of employment of external staff, being signed to union agreements. While the union organised across Ireland and indeed the UK; the majority of its membership was in Dublin.

Dublin's infamous longest strike - that at Downeys pub in Dun Laoghaire - actually related to the replacement of a unionised staff member with a barmaid

The first attempts to get this ban overturned came from a less than ideal source - the publicans union (Licenced Grocers and Vintners Association) seeking to be able to employ barmaids so that they could pay them less than men, this being explicitly legal until 1974. That barmaids were frequently employed beyond the reach of INUVGATA was also raised.

Irish Press, June 18th, 1964

The INUVGATA argument against women raised in their periodical, as quoted in the Herald on October 20th, 1966, was that allowing women in on lower wages would destroy the future careers of apprentice baman, who by this stage were actually doing some form of professional training - I presume via CERT which came in to being in 1963. Obviously the idea of just paying women the same escaped them!

While INUVGATA and the LGVA may have not allowed barmaids, we already know they did exist - and indeed some were also unionised - I would imagine mainly those in hotels, based on being in the ITGWU who, as their successor union SIPTU, are still a major union for hotel staff. The union successfully fought for a pay increase for their 35 female members in the trade in 1967.

Irish Independent, 15th July, 1967

This was still significantly less than men were being paid, as was the standard at the time.

The LGVA next floated the idea of hiring women in late 1969 - identical stories appear in the Herald and the Independent within a few days of each other - but this time it is a shortage of apprentices being given as the reason rather specifically saying they wanted to pay them less.

The INUVGATA first acceded to women working in unionised pubs in 1972; but not at the bar. It was an agreement over the hiring of what would now generally be called 'lounge staff', but possibly more accurately called waiters in the agreement with the LGVA 

Irish Press, 29th May 1972

This agreement came some months after the High Court had ruled that a ban on women working in pubs was unconstitutional, judgement by Mr Justice Kenny in this case being reported in March 1972; arising from an injunction against picketers and INUVGATA over pickets that had begun in 1971.

These were far from the only pickets over the hiring of women, but detailing every picket by the union would be a pointless task (which is why I only bothered listing cases of the actual customers picketing in another article).

I have not, yet, been able to find at what point INUVGATA allowed women to become members and hence work in unionised pubs - it was not well reported as far as it seems - but it may have been part of the National Wage Agreement 1974. This was done in the run-up the aforementioned 1975 legislation requiring equal pay (in theory, this is) which would have removed their main concern.

Additionally, the legislation which prohibited gender bars like this was tabled in 1975, becoming law in 1977.

I wouldn't be surprised if a trip to the Labour Court archives could help here; but that currently isn't possible.

The first reference I can find to INUVGATA barmaids is in the Irish Independent of October 6th, 1977, when a union rep claimed to have ten women as members, two of whom were chargehands (supervisors)

RetroReviews: S0115 The Bankers

This pub is amongst my favourites - a small pub in the city centre where you've got a decent chance of getting a seat, and which has good food and something beyond the standard 8 taps that smaller premises sometimes have.

My first visit here was probably before an Olympia gig, due to Brogans being full, but I've been back many times since.

One notable occasion was when I was invited along to a stag party for someone I didn't know - I did know one of the other members of the group and they wanted a tour guide for the afternoon. Having rescued them from Buskers and relieved them of the orange wigs they'd bought in Carrolls; The Bankers provided a table for food as it always seems to be able to do - despite the city being very busy.

I eventually extracted them to move on to another pub when the best man appeared to be falling in love with the waitress - unrequitedly, I suspect - and they didn't really feel like leaving him there to make an idiot of himself when they could instead all make idiots of themselves collectively somewhere.

The Bankers made more use of its outdoor seating on to Dame Lane for outdoor dining (when that was allowed), and hopefully this continues when weather and regulations are suitable.