Ladies' ordinary

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A ladies' ordinary was a women-only dining space which started to appear in North American hotels and restaurants in the early 19th century.[1] At the time, women were not permitted to dine alone or unaccompanied by a male escort in restaurants and the public rooms of luxury, mainly urban hotels. A ladies' ordinary provided a socially acceptable venue where respectable women could dine alone or with other women. It also protected women from the unwanted gazes and advances of men, a common fear in the male-dominated environment of the restaurant.

The first hotel to have housed a ladies' ordinary is thought to be Tremont House, Boston.[2] On November 2, 1833, a restaurant for women referred to as a ladies' ordinary opened in New York City, by the proprietors of a neighbouring establishment called the Clinton Lunch.[3] Isabella Lucy Bird, while travelling in the United States in the mid-19th century, wrote that the American House, a hotel in Boston, had an upstairs room separate from the main dining room called 'The Ladies' Ordinary', "where families, ladies and their invited guests take their meals".[4]

References

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  1. ^ Freedman, Paul (2014-09-01). "Women and Restaurants in the Nineteenth-Century United States". Journal of Social History. 48 (1): 1–19. doi:10.1093/jsh/shu042. ISSN 0022-4529.
  2. ^ Freedman, Paul (2011-02-17). "American Restaurants and Cuisine in the Mid–Nineteenth Century". The New England Quarterly. 84 (1): 5–59. doi:10.1162/TNEQ_a_00066. ISSN 0028-4866. S2CID 57560050.
  3. ^ "Ladies' Ordinary" (PDF). The Evening Post. 2 November 1833. Retrieved 28 April 2017.
  4. ^ Bird, Isabella Lucy (1966). The Englishwoman in America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 100.


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