The Dishwater Menace: Healthy Drinking Spaces and the Public Good in Post-Prohibition Ontario.

Abstract

This paper examines inter-bureaucracy tension, negotiation, and resolution in the case of the oversight of beverage room sanitation in Ontario in the 1930s and 1940s. Both the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) and various public health authorities claimed authority over the health status of public drinking spaces. But the LCBO had legislative priority. The ensuing debates regarding health and cleanliness linked issues of beverage room glass sanitation to a biopolitical approach to public drinking. Developing a more scientifically sophisticated approach to beverage glass cleaning required a balancing of administrative priorities. Perfect sanitation was expensive and complicated, and the LCBO's mandate demanded attention to the financial viability of beverage rooms. The LCBO needed to forge a trade off between safety and viability, while maintaining a public drinking system that dissuaded illegal drinking. The subsequent compromise in beverage room glass sanitation tied contemporary chemical sanitizers to the challenging economics of depression-era beverage room management.