_{By MICK ROBERTS ©}

A REPORTER braved the bars of South Australia’s capital to gauge the reaction from drinkers on a radical idea of providing ‘bibs’ to pub goers in 1954.

The Adelaide News snapped Lionel Rogers (left) and Harry Geggie ‘modelling’ the plastic bibs at the Exchange Hotel, Adelaide on December 30 1954.

“I go crook when they put a collar on my beer, but I’d be really hot under the collar if they tried to make me wear a bib with it.”

That was one early morning tippler’s reaction, reported the newspaper, to a suggestion by the Victorian secretary of the Liquor Trades Union, Mr. J. Coull, that publicans should provide plastic bibs to prevent beer spilling on the ties and suits of drinkers.

“What do you think we are?” said one man, “a bunch of bodgies?”

Two barmen in a Hindley street hotel were preparing for the business of the day when the question was posed to them.

Said one: “A man who makes a suggestion like that shouldn’t be let in.”

“Or out,” put in his mate.

President of the forerunner of the Australian Hotels Association, United Liquor Victuallers Association, Max Flannagan, slammed the idea.

“Although, I don’t want to stick my bib into the argument.”

More on the history of Adelaide’s Exchange Hotel at The Time Gents story: Walter sat at the same table in Adelaide’s Exchange Hotel for 42 years 

_{© Copyright Mick Roberts 2024}

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Categories: Adelaide hotels, Australian Hotels, South Australia Hotels

Tags: Exchange Hotel Adelaide