Mild Ale as entertainment

Random searches for terms like Mild Ale in the newspaper archive turn up some odd stuff. Like this about what sound like a rathe r incompatible couple.

"THE TORY WIFE AND SOCIALIST HUSBAND
MRs. LOUISA Colledge complained that her husband pulled the bedclothes off her if she fell asleep while he was talking on his favourite topic — politics — a Judge said yesterday.

And In politics particularly. went on Mr. Justice Stevenson in the Divorce Court, Mr. and Mrs. Colledge were "dissimilar and incompatible".

Mrs. Colledge, 37, was "prim, careful and precise, and a Conservative way of thinking." Her husband, George, 34, was unimaginative and, by comparison with his wife, rough and uncouth - and a sincere believer Socialism."

Mrs. Colledge. a shorthand typist. of Meadowside Cambridge-park, Twickenham. asked for a decree on the grounds of cruelty. Mr. . Colledge, a clerk. of Redlees-close, Isleworth, denied cruelty.

The Judge said Mrs. Colledge alleged that her bashand referred to her aad her family as parasites

"I hove no doubt there were sharp and bitter political arguments between them." continued the judge.

"The husband may well have used the word parasite Bet it may well be that the wife did not realise it was a poilUcal term In the kind of political disputation to which the husband was addicted.

Mild Ale
Mr. Colledge's sole source of relaxation appeared to be to spend many evenings every week drinking mild ale in a public house, said the judge. He said he drank four pints on weekdays and six pints on Saturdays.

The wife—adjusting herself to her husband's ways. said the judge  accomplled him to the public house and drank half a pint to his pint.

Each claimed that drinking made the other mere irritable, said the judge, and arguments begun in the public house were continued at home in bed.

But the judge said that however bitter the arguments, they did not amount to cruelty. He dismissed Mrs. Colledge's petition."
Daily Mirror - Thursday 20 February 1958, page 9.

At least the wife drank Mild. A husband with a pint and his wife with a half pint was a common enough sight when I first drank in pubs way back in the 1970s.

Though when the Cardigan Arms was my local there was a couple in their fifties who were also frequent drinkers. The man used to have a pint of Mild and the woman two halves. Which looked weird. But back then women, especially older ones, would never have considered drinking a pint.

Some pubs wouldn't serve women pints and others insisted on women drinking from stemmed glasses. Times, happily, have changed. Dolores wouldn't have been very happy having to drink halves.