For some time Etiquetteer has had a little note tacked up on the bulletin board, “August 27, 1970: first women admitted to Locke-Ober.” And wouldn’t you know it, August 27, 2020, was last week and just whooshed by without Etiquetteer even thinking about it. But it’s an important milestone to remember in the annals of Perfect Propriety.
Locke-Ober, may it rest in peace, was the pinnacle of fine dining in Boston for almost 150 years. It was celebrated for its luxurious rooms, its menu blending Continental cuisine with good old Yankee cooking, its oil painting of a robustly built young woman named Yvonne, lightly attired in a strategic scarf and nothing else . . . and its exclusion of women except for New Year’s Eve, and the night of the Harvard-Yale game*.
August 27, 1970, was neither of those things, but suddenly Locke-Ober got a double dose of the Power of Women, enough to land a prominent photo on the front page of the Boston Globe. It was the day of a National Women’s Strike for Equality, and a couple dozen women took advantage of the day to demand service at both Locke-Ober and Parker’s Bar at the Parker House, “both all-male sanctuaries for close to a century” according to the Globe. “The girls demanded drinks, got them, and quaffed them with toasts to their new freedom.” The “mini-skirted intruders” were not exactly greeted with open arms; the bartender at the Parker House said if they came back the next day he’d throw them out.
What interests Etiquetteer more, of course, is the Perfectly Proper luncheon party of five women and three men who had previously reserved a 2:00 PM table. “Five demure young professional women, accompanied by three men, walked into the men’s bar and claimed a table they had reserved earlier.” Legend has it that the table had been reserved by a “Dr. Remington of MIT” who turned out to be a whole party of women, but it’s not clear to Etiquetteer exactly who in the party that was. The female diner who spoke to the Globe reporter** was identified as “blonde Jane Pratt, a political science doctoral candidate at MIT.” Her obituary is here, but does not refer to her role at Locke-Ober.
Credit must also be given to the maitre d’ on duty - if he had any concerns about this unprecedented event he discreetly repressed them - as well as management, who chose to admit women ever after, whether accompanied by men or not.
You might also be interested in this piece on women and restaurants in the 19th century.
Three years later, a Boston Globe columnist reflected on the outcome positively, but only because he liked looking at “the endearing young charms of the girls in their summer dresses. In other words, had the battleaxes not laid siege to this lovely room with a view it might never had such attractive women as it did Friday evening.” That’s a particularly sexist opinion - women are welcome only as long as their beauty and charm appeal to men - and that writer compounded it by making some unkind comparisons to “the Libbers.” But by doing so, he unwittingly made a point Etiquetteer learned from Martin Duberman’s remarkable book Stonewall: that for social change to last, all forms of protest are required, from the Perfectly Proper to . . . to . . . to Other Than Perfectly Proper. From that creative tension, Good Change can come.
To celebrate, Etiquetteer may well concoct a couple items for which Locke-Ober was known: the Ward Eight cocktail and creamed spinach. Etiquetteer just doesn’t feel up to a Baked Alaska.
*The painting of Yvonne would be draped in black if Harvard lost.
**And described as “spokesman.” This was obviously before gender-neutral designations like “spokesperson” had caught on.