Being drunk and disorderly in a public place was an offence under Victoria’s Police Offences Statute 1865, liable to a fine of up to £2 or imprisonment for up to 3 days if a first offence, or a fine of up to £5 or 14 days imprisonment for any subsequent offences.

However, the same activity could carry a heavier penalty if the individual was charged under section 35 (on vagrancy) under the same Act, subsection 3 of which read:

Any habitual drunkard having been thrice convicted of drunkenness within the preceding twelve months and any common prostitute who in any street or public highway or being in any place of public resort shall behave in a riotous or indecent manner…shall be liable to imprisonment in any gaol for any time not exceeding twelve months with or without hard labour.

Public drunkenness was one of the most common offences that Victoria’s police charged people with in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It was a charge that disproportionately affected working-class communities, who were more likely to be doing their drinking in public places and hotels, compared to the middle and upper classes who were more likely to drink at home or other private settings.

The charge was also historically used to police marginalised communities regarded as suspect by authorities, including sex-workers, the homeless, youth and Indigenous persons. For these reasons, public drunkenness was decriminalised in many states in Australia from the 1970s onwards. However, it was only in 2019 that drunkenness was decriminalised in Victoria, following the death of Aboriginal woman Tanya Day while she was in custody on a public drunkenness charge.

Legal scholars Luke McNamara and Julia Quilter have argued that in practice decriminalisation of public drunkenness in Australian jurisdictions has not drastically changed the way public drunkenness is often used as a means of policing vulnerable populations.

Further Information:

Garton, Stephen. “Once a Drunkard Always a Drunkard: Social Reform and the Problem of ‘ Habitual Drunkenness’ in Australia, 1880-1914.” Labour History, no. 53 (November 1987): 38-53.

McNamara, Luke, and Julia Quilter. “Public Intoxication in NSW: The Contours of Criminalisation.” The Sydney Law Review 37, no. 1 (2015): 1-35.

Piper, Alana. “‘”A Growing Vice”: The Truth About Brisbane Girls and Drunkenness in the Early Twentieth Century.” Journal of Australian Studies 34, no. 4 (2010): 485-97.

Piper, Alana. “‘All the Waters of Lethe’: An Experience of Female Alcoholism in Federation Queensland.” Queensland Review 18, no. 1 (2011): 85-97.

Straw, Leigh S. L. Drunks, Pests and Harlots: Criminal Women in Perth and Fremantle, 1900-1939.  Kilkerran: Humming Earth, 2013.

Sturma, Michael. “Police and Drunkards in Sydney, 1841-1851.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 27, no. 1 (1981): 48-56.

Wilson, Bill. “Stupor in Paradise: Drunkenness, Disorder and Drug Offences in the Northern Territory 1870-1926.” In Policing the Lucky Country, edited by Mike Enders and Benoît Dupont, 147-57. Sydney: Hawkins Press, 2001.