Dear Motley Officers, Crew and Friends, in this, my last talk from the City of London, I am going to talk about the coffee houses, as they were integral to the development of many of the modern institutions of the City of London.
Nowadays we think of the cafés of Paris or Vienna, with the smell of roasted coffee and newspapers available to read or spending time chatting with friends. While London was not the first city to open a coffee house – that was Mecca in 1511 – the first coffee house in London was opened in 16521. Boston in America and Marseilles in France both opened coffee houses before Paris (1671) and Vienna (1685).
While the British are thought of as tea drinkers, in the 17th Century tea was just as exotic as coffee, and as expensive. Pasqua Rosee was a Greek man who became the servant of Daniel Edwards, an English merchant living in what is now Turkey. While they were in Turkey one of Rosee’s tasks was to make Edwards a coffee every morning. When they returned to London Edwards, like all merchants, kept an open house and Rosee made them coffee - the visitors loved the novelty of drinking coffee. Edwards’ house became so popular with coffee drinkers that he felt he needed some peace & quiet. So, Edwards and a fellow merchant sponsored Rosee to open a coffee stall, and when that proved popular, a coffee house.
This successful coffee house business was soon copied, and coffee houses sprang up all over London. Coffee at the time was considered medicinal. A 1661 tract gave these benefits of coffee (translated into modern English): “It is extolled for drying up the crudities of the stomach, and for expelling fumes out of the head. Excellent Berry! Which can cleanse the Englishman's stomach of phlegm and expel giddiness out of his head”. Coffee was also known to rejuvenate and keep one awake.
Coffee gradually lost its medicinal role and was drunk for enjoyment. But the coffee house became more than a place to drink a coffee. Patrons went to meet friends, and to hear and discuss the latest news. The lack of alcohol was a contributing factor to the development of the coffee house as a place to conduct business.
In a society that placed a high importance on class and economic status, the coffee houses were unique, because the patrons were people from all levels of society. Anyone who had a penny to buy a coffee could go inside. There were also rules to ensure polite conversation.
On December 1660 Samuel Pepys wrote: “In the evening to the Coffee House in Cornhill, the first time that ever I was there, and I found much pleasure in it, through the diversity of company and discourse.”
News was very important. The coffee houses provided the few newspapers available, but the news was limited, and they were censored to a certain extent. The patrons provided a lot more news and background to political events. Pepys made contacts with people who became important to his career, and he held business meetings at the coffee house. He learnt a lot of information that was invaluable to him in his job at the Navy Office and helped him get promotion. Though sometimes Pepys just visited coffee houses for the fun of the debates.
Despite the plague and the Great Fire of London in 1666, the coffee houses thrived. With so much of the city destroyed in the Great Fire they became even more important as meeting places, and places to transact business.
While women often served in a coffee house, it was deemed unsuitable for women to visit one2. Some women were not convinced that men were engaged on important affairs in the coffee house but were just chatting with their mates when they should have been at home. There was also some concern that coffee could have an effect on men’s fertility.
The exchange of news, debates and discussions in the coffee houses became of concern to King Charles II and the newly restored monarchy. There was a lot of anti-royalist feeling, and it was thought the coffee houses were a breeding ground for anarchy. In 1675 Charles II tried to ban coffee houses, but it caused such a public outcry that the plan failed.
Coffee houses started to diversify depending on their location and therefore their patrons. Garraway’s was the first place to sell tea to the public, though it later became a coffee house. In Old & New London Walter Thornbury wrote about Garraway’s “as a place of sale, exchange, auction, and lottery, it was never excelled. … here the South Sea Bubblers met3."
Coffee houses were sometimes called Penny Universities, and some held scientific demonstrations. Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke demonstrated a device to pump air out of a glass globe. The resulting space, evacuated of air, was used for experiments.
By 1739, there were over 550 coffee houses in London, in a city with just over half a million people. As coffee houses specialised, they became more exclusive. Ironically this was the beginning of the end of their popularity.
A commercial exchange building had been built in London for merchants and traders to conduct their business dealings. The Exchange was opened by Queen Elizabeth I, in January 1571. She then bestowed the ‘royal’ title. The streets around the Royal Exchange were full of coffee houses. In turn the coffee houses were full of seamen, businessmen, politicians, men of letters, scientists, foreigners and above all, news and gossip. The latest news was vital to the merchants & traders, and coffee houses nearby became an extension of the Royal Exchange.
Coffee houses often held auctions, and this was taken a stage further at a coffee house called Jonathan’s, where stockbrokers started auctioning/trading. An incomprehensible jargon evolved, understood by the traders, to make the process quicker. This jargon and the noise of trading not only alienated the non-traders who frequented the coffee house, those non-traders were an annoyance to the stockbrokers.
In 1761 a group of stockbrokers tried to persuade Jonathan’s to give them exclusive rights to the premises, for a fee. However, one of the non-trading regulars took them to court. He won his case, as it was judged that such exclusivity was incompatible with the nature of a coffee house. So, the stockbrokers moved to a new building, not a coffee house, though it was initially called ‘New Jonathan’s’. The name was later changed to ‘The Stock Exchange’4, and it is still at the heart of modern financial London.
Edward Lloyd ran a coffee house that specialised in serving seafaring patrons, merchants and anyone concerned with the shipping trade. The news in the coffee house was up-to-date and the coffee house printed a couple of publications about shipping movements and marine news. When the news arrived, waiters read it to the patrons from a lectern in the middle of the room. The notice was then pinned to a board, and printed to be sold around the city, and beyond. Lloyd’s coffee house became the centre for shipping news. It was not a big leap for the marine insurance business, that required the same information, to start in the Lloyd’s coffee house.
By the late 18th Century the insurance underwriters were unhappy with the way the Lloyd’s coffee house was being run, and presumably the security risk of anyone being able to frequent the house. They moved to rooms within the nearby Royal Exchange and shut out the public. Nowadays Lloyd’s is one of the biggest insurance companies in the world and resides in a modern steel & glass building.
Gradually businesses moved out of coffee houses. In the 18th Century gentlemen’s clubs opened in London; they were exclusive and gave members more facilities than the coffee houses. By 1750 tea had become more widely drunk than coffee. When, in the 1860s, a fungal infection decimated the coffee crop in Ceylon, tea became even more popular. Coffee houses failed to adapt or become like the continental cafés, and most closed.
And that was the end of the coffee houses. Until 1998, when Starbucks opened their first coffee house in the UK, and there is now a coffee shop on every corner. But sadly, they will never replicate the social inclusion and wide range of subjects discussed in the 17th & 18th Century coffee houses.
As always, any links are provided to give the reader more information. I do not make any money from these links. Where possible permissions have been sought for the use of images and text, unless they are in the Public Domain. If there is an issue with copyright, please contact me. I am an amateur historian covering a wide range of subjects. I do careful research using secondary sources (books, articles, videos and a little bit of Wikipedia). If there are any mistakes I apologise, and please let me know.
There is a debate about London being the first coffee house in Britain. Oxford also claims the earliest coffee house.
There was a coffee house in Bath used by women.
The South Sea Bubble. In 1713, in order to reduce the national debt in Britain, the South Sea Company was granted a monopoly to supply African slaves to the islands in the ‘South Seas’ (in the Pacific Ocean) and South America. I know, it is terrible to look back at such practices.
However, Spain & Portugal controlled the area and there was never any realistic prospect Britain would be able to trade in that region. This was not made known to investors and many eminent people were involved in the company, including members of the Government and the King. This encouraged investors, and fantastic returns encouraged even more investors. But it became a fraud, with early investors being paid ‘profits’ from money given by later investors. There was a catastrophic financial crash when the ‘bubble’ burst in 1720. Many people lost huge amounts of money including Isaac Newton, and the national economy diminished substantially.
Now the London Stock Exchange.