Established in 1836, the city of Adelaide, Australia, was named after the wife of King William IV of England. It is the capital of the state of South Australia. Adelaide's first residents were not convicts but free settlers, lured by the promise of wealth in the copper, wool or wheat industries. The city's early years also saw a large hotel boom.
Many hotels were springing up in Adelaide throughout the mid-19th century. For example, the Globe Inn was described in the "Chronicle" newspaper on Feb. 6, 1864, and the expansion of Adelaide's Brecknock Arms Inn was reported by the "Register" on July 26, 1866, according to the Manning Index of South Australian History. The index maintains a list of hotel references in historic publications and newspapers.
The city plan for Adelaide, developed in the mid-19th century, was carried out by Col. William Light. According to the book "Oasis in the Outback -- Adelaide's Refreshing Architecture" by Nicolette Di Lernia, Light's vision helped firmly root Adelaide's architecture, including its hotels, in the city's English colonial past.
Geoffrey H. Manning wrote in the book "A Colonial Experience" that nearly every visitor to Adelaide's hotels of the 1860s had beer with dinner. "If you had the temerity to ask for tea you would be exceedingly fortunate if you got it, and if you got it, fortunate if you could drink it," he wrote. "If you drank water -- and a wise traveler liked to know the source of the water supply -- you would be considered an eccentric."
Manning quoted the complaints of one Adelaide resident from the late 1800s who was fed up with the city's drunkenness. "There are too many hotels here," the resident said. "Some of them are conducted in a respectable manner; in others, every art is used to induce men to drink. Our young men are being hurried to destruction at a railway speed."
It seems that nearby Port Adelaide, a shipping town that was in full swing by the early 20th century, faced similar problems. In 1906, fifteen out of the city's 45 hotels lost their licenses to serve alcohol.
