Coffee houses provided room for interaction. They had impacted the life and culture of people in London and around the globe. The presentation show how the society in London came under the influence of Coffee House Culture.

2. Drinking coffee has got to be something
inherently social as we invite our friends and
relatives over a cup of coffee.
Hence it cannot be considered as a modern
phenomenon since it is always connected
with sociability.

6. To the English, the coffee-house was an entirely new
and exciting occurrence. For centuries, taverns were
solely the place where you went to meet friends and
relax with a drink. Now, this foreign phenomenon was
rapidly rose to become the most exciting scene of urban
sociability. Never before had England seen such a space,
where men of diverse ranks of life would gather in a
more or less sober fashion to discuss current affairs,
philosophy, contemporary literature and the latest
scientific ideas and inventions. Topics of conversation
differs according to the particular clientele and ranged
across diverse subject matter. It was a place where you
could always be of hearing and discussing current
affairs; runners were sent around the coffee-houses to
report breaking news, and London's first newspapers
and journals began by circulating out of coffee-houses.

7. COFFEE HOUSE: A CULTURAL HISTORY

8. Coffee-houses had been widespread ever since
people there started drinking coffee in the 15th
century.
When coffee was introduced to Europe in the
late 16th century, within a matter of decades it
was enjoyed in the coffee-houses which were
springing up in the great cities of Venice,
Vienna, Paris and Amsterdam. The English
quickly adopted coffee as their European
counterparts. A coffee-house opened in Oxford
in 1652 and was swiftly followed by Cornhill
in London, established by a young Greek
servant named Pasqua Rosée. Coffee-houses
vastly grew in number and popularity and it is
estimated that by 1700, London boasted up to
3,000 coffee-houses; more than any other city
in the world except Constantinople.

10. MAP SHOWING THE LOCATION OF MANY OF THE OLD LONDON COFFEE HOUSES
PREVIOUS TO THE FIRE OF 1748

11. It’s not just that our tastebuds have grown
more discerning accustomed as we are to silky-
smooth Flat Whites; contemporaries found it
disgusting too.
One early sampler likened it to a “syrup of soot
and the essence of old shoes” while others were
reminded of oil, ink, soot, mud, damp and shit.
Nonetheless, people loved how the “bitter
Mohammedan gruel”, as The London
Spy described it in 1701, kindled conversations,
fired debates, sparked ideas and, as Pasqua
himself pointed out in his handbill The Virtue
of the Coffee Drink (1652), made one “fit for
business” — his stall was a stone’s throw from
that great entrepôt of international commerce,
the Royal Exchange.

12. A disagreement about the Cartesian Dream Argument (or similar) turns
sour. Note the man throwing coffee in his opponent’s face. From the
frontispiece of Ned Ward’s satirical poem Vulgus Brittanicus (1710) and
probably more of a flight of fancy than a faithful depiction of
coffeehouse practices

13. The earliest known image of a coffeehouse dated to 1674, showing the kind of
coffeehouse familiar to Samuel Pepys
The meteoric success of Pasqua’s shack triggered a coffeehouse boom. By 1656, there was a second
coffeehouse at the sign of the rainbow on Fleet Street; by 1663, 82 had sprung up within the
crumbling Roman walls, and a cluster further west like Will’s in Covent Garden, a fashionable
literary resort where Samuel Pepys found his old college chum John Dryden presiding over “very
pleasant and witty discourse” in 1664 and wished he could stay longer — but he had to pick up
his wife, who most certainly would not have been welcome.

14. A small body-colour drawing of the interior of a London coffeehouse from c. 1705. Everything
about this oozes warmth and welcome from the bubbling coffee cauldron right down to the
flickering candles and kind eyes of the coffee drinkers
Early coffeehouses provided the interaction between customers and forging a creative, convivial
environment. They emerged as smoky candlelit forums for commercial transactions, spirited
debate, and the exchange of information, ideas, and lies. This small body-colour drawing shows
an anonymous (and so, it’s safe to assume, fairly typical) coffeehouse from around 1700.

15. Coffee-houses were also the target of much mockery. In his
bitingly satirical 1703 book The London Spy, writer and
publican Ned Ward dismissed coffee-houses as grubby dens
stuffed with "a parcel of muddling muck-worms...some going,
some coming, some scribbling, some talking, some drinking,
others jangling, and the whole room stinking of tobacco like a
Dutch barge". However, defenders of coffee-houses maintained
that they stimulated sociability and intellectual debate, besides
which they exercised a sobering function on the population as
they drew people away from the taverns. They also argued that
coffee itself was beneficial for one's health, notwithstanding
opponents' claims that coffee tasted "like syrup of soot and the
essence of old shoes".

16. Ned Ward (1667 – 20 June 1731), also
known as Edward Ward, was a satirical
writer and publican in the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth century
based in London. His most famous work
is The London Spy. Published in 18
monthly instalments starting in
November 1698 it was described (by the
author) as a "complete survey" of the
London scene. It was first published in
book form in 1703.

17. Looking at the cartoonish image, decorated in the same innocent
style as contemporary decorated fans, it’s hard to reconcile it with
Voltaire’s rebuke of a City coffeehouse in the 1720s as “dirty, ill-
furnished, ill-served, and ill-lighted” nor particularly London
Spy author Ned Ward’s (admittedly scurrilous) evocation of a
soot-coated den of iniquity with jagged floorboards and papered-
over windows populated by “a parcel of muddling muck-
worms…some going, some coming, some scribbling, some talking,
some drinking, others jangling, and the whole room stinking of
tobacco.” But, the establishments in the West End and Exchange
Alley excepted, coffeehouses were generally spartan, wooden and
no-nonsense.

18. Exchange Alley after it was razed to the ground in 1748, showing the sites
of some of London’s most famous coffeehouses including Garraway’s and
Jonathan’s

20. Hogarth’s depiction of Moll and Tom King’s coffee-shack from The Four Times of Day
(1736). Though it is early morning, the night has only just begun for the drunken
rakes and prostitutes spilling out of the coffeehouse

24. No respectable women would have been seen dead in a coffeehouse. It
wasn’t long before wives became frustrated at the amount of time their
husbands were idling away “deposing princes, settling the bounds of
kingdoms, and balancing the power of Europe with great justice and
impartiality”, as Richard Steele put it in the Tatler, all from the
comfort of a fireside bench. In 1674, years of simmering resentment
erupted into the volcano of fury that was the Women’s Petition
Against Coffee. The fair sex lambasted the “Excessive use of that
Newfangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor called COFFEE” which,
as they saw it, had reduced their virile industrious men into effeminate,
babbling, French layabouts. Retaliation was swift and acerbic in the
form of the vulgar Men’s Answer to the Women’s Petition Against
Coffee, which claimed it was “base adulterate wine” and “muddy ale”
that made men impotent. Coffee, in fact, was the Viagra of the day,
making “the erection more vigorous, the ejaculation more full, add[ing]
a spiritual ascendency to the sperm”.

25. There were no more Women’s Petitions after that but the coffeehouses
found themselves in more dangerous waters when Charles II, a
longtime critic, tried to torpedo them by royal proclamation in 1675.
Traditionally, informed political debate had been the preserve of the
social elite. But in the coffeehouse it was anyone’s business — that is,
anyone who could afford the measly one-penny entrance fee. For the
poor and those living on subsistence wages, they were out of reach. But
they were affordable for anyone with surplus wealth — the 35 to 40
per cent of London’s 287,500-strong male population who qualified as
‘middle class’ in 1700 — and sometimes reckless or extravagant
spenders further down the social pyramid. Charles suspected the
coffeehouses were hotbeds of sedition and scandal but in the face of
widespread opposition — articulated most forcefully in the
coffeehouses themselves — the King was forced to cave in and
recognise that as much as he disliked them, coffeehouses were now an
intrinsic feature of urban life.

26. What was the public reaction to
coffee-houses?
Coffee and coffee-houses had a pernicious
influence on public morals and behaviour. The
authorities worried, perhaps not without reason,
that coffee-houses were hotbeds of sedition.

27. In 1675, King Charles II issued a
proclamation against them, saying that
they produced "very evil and dangerous
effects...for that in such Houses...divers
False, Malitious and Scandalous Reports
are devised and spread abroad, to the
Defamation of His Majestie's
Government, and to the Disturbance of
the Peace and Quiet of the Realm". This
provoked a public outcry and Charles
backed down, settling on a rather vague
order that the owners of coffee-houses
should refuse admittance to spies and
mischief-makers.

29. 'Coffee-house politicians', c.1700: coffee-houses were an ideal
place to discuss the news with friends and strangers alike
In one of his visits to London, Jonathan Swift remarked, "I am not yet
convinced that any Access to men in Power gives a man more Truth or Light
than the Politicks of a Coffee House".

31. Coffee-houses were vibrant centres of debate. They were also surprisingly
democratic institutions. If only you were reasonably dressed, for just a penny
you would be privileged to get a dish of coffee with unlimited refills along
with access to all the latest newspapers and journals.
Coffee-houses used to be decorated in a spartan style with long wooden-
benches where lowly civil servants could rub shoulders with prominent
politicians, where a poor curate visiting from the country could enjoy an
interesting discussion with a rich city stockbroker.

32. WILL’S COFFEE HOUSE IN LONDON
Will's was indisputably the most famous coffee house of the
century. It was owned by William Urwin and situated in one of
the most stylish parts of London on Russell Street in Covent
Garden. One of the reasons for the popularity of this particular
coffee house was its regular visits from John Dryden the English
poet and dramatist . Dryden sat at a principal table when he went
to Will's and was rarely approached by younger gentleman who
thought it a privilege to get a pinch from his snuff-box. The inside
of Will's probably looked somewhat like the picture to the right of
Lloyd's coffee house. Instead of sitting in boxes, as done later,
people gathered at tables set up around the room. Smoking was
so fashionable at the time that it was too popular to be
prohibited.

34. In this respect, English coffee-houses
were very different from their
French equivalents, which from the
beginning were designed for intimate
conversation among crystal
chandeliers, ornate mirrors and little
marble tables. The English model
meant that men from many walks of
life had access to a very cheap way
of keeping up with current affairs
and engaging in intellectual
discussion.

35. THE FRENCH COFFEE HOUSE IN LONDON, SECOND HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY

37. Lloyd’s Coffee House
from Coffee House to the Power House
The coffee house that Edward Lloyd opened in 1687 near the Thames on Tower Street was a
favourite haunt of men from the ships that moored at London's docks. The house was "spacious,
well built and inhabited by able tradesmen" according to a contemporary publication. It grew so
popular that in 1691 Lloyd moved it to much larger and more luxurious quarters on Lombard
Street. Ned Ward, a publican whom Alexander Pope accused of trading vile rhymes for tobacco,
reported that the tables in the new house were "very neat and shined with rubbing." A staff of
five served tea and sherbet as well as coffee. Lloyd had grown up under Oliver Cromwell and he
had lived through plague, fire, the Dutch invasion up the Thames in 1667, and the Glorious
Revolution of 1688. He was a lot more than a skilled coffeehouse host. Recognizing the value of
his customer base and responding to the insistent demand for information, he launched "Lloyd's
List" in 1696 and filled it with information on the arrivals and departures of ships and
intelligence on conditions abroad and at sea. That information was provided by a network of
correspondents in major ports on the Continent and in England. Ship auctions took place
regularly on the premises, and Lloyd obligingly furnished the paper and ink needed to record the
transactions. One corner was reserved for ships' captains where they could compare notes on the
hazards of all the new routes that were opening up - routes that led them farther east, farther
south, and farther west than ever before. Lloyd's establishment was open almost around the
clock and was always crowded.

39. LLOYD'S COFFEE HOUSE IN THE ROYAL EXCHANGE, SHOWING THE SUBSCRIPTION ROOM

42. Early coffeehouses were socially inclusive spaces where
lords sat cheek-by-jowl with fishmongers and where
butchers trumped baronets in philosophical debates. “Pre-
eminence of place none here should mind,” proclaimed
the Rules and Orders of the Coffee-House (1674), “but
take the next fit seat he can find” — which would seem
to chime with John Macky’s description of noblemen and
“private gentlemen” mingling together in the Covent
Garden coffeehouses “and talking with the same
Freedom, as if they had left their Quality and Degrees of
Distance at Home.”

43. The coffeehouse’s formula of maximised sociability, critical judgement, and relative sobriety proved a
catalyst for creativity and innovation. Coffeehouses encouraged political debate, which paved the
way for the expansion of the electorate in the 19th century. The City coffeehouses spawned capitalist
innovations that shaped the modern world. Other coffeehouses sparked journalistic innovation.
Nowhere was this more apparent than at Button’s coffeehouse, a stone’s throw from Covent Garden
piazza on Russell Street.
The figure in the cloak is Count Viviani; of the figures facing the reader the draughts player is
Dr Arbuthnot, and the figure standing is assumed to be Pope

44. It was opened in 1712 by the essayist and playwright Joseph
Addison, partly as a refuge from his quarrelsome marriage,
but it soon grew into a forum for literary debate where the
stars of literary London — Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift,
Arbuthnot and others — would assemble each evening,
casting their superb literary judgements on new plays, poems,
novels, and manuscripts, making and breaking literary
reputations in the process. Planted on the western side of the
coffeehouse was a marble lion’s head with a gaping mouth,
razor-sharp jaws, and “whiskers admired by all that see
them”. Probably the world’s most surreal medium of literary
communication, he was a playful British slant on a chilling
Venetian tradition.

45. BEDFORD COFFEE HOUSE
At the Bedford Coffeehouse in Covent Garden hung a
“theatrical thermometer” with temperatures ranging from
“excellent” to “execrable”, registering the company’s verdicts
on the latest plays and performances, tormenting
playwrights and actors on a weekly basis.
The BEDFORD, "under the Piazza, in Covent Garden,"
crowded every night with men of parts and "signalized for
many years as the emporium of wit, the seat of criticism and
the standard of taste“.

46. The Bedford Coffee House, Covent Garden, London, in the middle of
the eighteenth century; from Country Life, 1 November 1913.

47. FIRST ADVERTISEMENT FOR COFFEE

48. The first newspaper advertisement for coffee appeared, May 26, 1657, in the
Publick Adviser of London, one of the first weekly pamphlets. The name of
this publication was erroneously given as the Publick Advertiser by an early
writer on coffee, and the error has been copied by succeeding writers.
The first newspaper advertisement was contained in the issue of the Publick
Adviser for the week of May 19 to May 26, and read:
In Bartholomew Lane on the back side of the Old Exchange, the drink
called Coffee, (which is a very wholsom and Physical drink, having many
excellent vertues, closes the Orifice of the Stomack, fortifies the heat within,
helpeth Digestion, quickneth the Spirits, maketh the heart lightsom, is good
against Eye-sores, Coughs, or Colds, Rhumes, Consumptions, Head-ach,
Dropsie, Gout, Scurvy, Kings Evil, and many others is to be sold both in the
morning, and at three of the clock in the afternoon).

49. THE FIRST NEWSPAPER ADVERTISEMENT FOR COFFEE—1657

50. THE BRITISH COFFEE HOUSE IN COCKSPUR STREET from a print published in 1770
THE BRITISH, Cockspur Street, "long a house of call for Scotchmen," was fortunate in its
landladies. In 1759 it was kept by the sister of Bishop Douglas, so well known for his works
against Lauder and Bower, which may explain its Scottish fame. At another period it was kept by
Mrs. Anderson, described in Mackenzie's Life of Home as "a woman of uncommon talents and the
most agreeable conversation."

51. Critics would have been glad to see the gradual decline of the coffee-
house in the last decades of the 18th century. Thanks to the rise of the
mighty British East India Company, tea was imported in ever-greater
quantities and quite swiftly became the nation's favourite drink, thus
forever cementing Britain's reputation as a land of tea-drinkers.
The social and economic functions of coffee-houses also became less
important as daily newspapers started circulating outside of coffee-
houses and home mail delivery was gradually established.
Increasingly, men could keep up with current affairs without stirring
from their fireside. The coffee-houses which continued to prosper did so
by becoming exclusive members' clubs designed for the wealthy,
fashionable or academic elite.

52. Edward Gibbons' 1762 description of The Cocoa-Tree Club, "that
respectable body of which I am a member", clearly shows the ever
more elite nature of some coffee-houses: "[it] affords a sight truly
English; twenty, or perhaps thirty, of the first men in the kingdom
in point of fashion and fortune, supping at little tables covered
with a napkin in the middle of a coffee-room, upon a bit of cold
meat on a sandwich, and drinking a glass of punch". Yet for over a
century, the political, social and intellectual life of a nation was
crammed into London coffee-houses where anyone who was
reasonably dressed and had a penny to spare could come in and join
the discussion. As Isaac Disraeli noted, "the history of Coffee-
houses, ere the invention of clubs, was that of the manners, the
morals, the politics of a people".

53. DECLINE AND FALL OF THE COFFEE HOUSE
Starting as a forum for the commoner, "the coffee house soon became the plaything of the leisure
class; and when the club was evolved, the coffee house began to retrograde to the level of the tavern.
And so the eighteenth century, which saw the coffee house at the height of its power and popularity,
witnessed also its decline and fall. It is said there were as many clubs at the end of the century as
there were coffee houses at the beginning."
For a time, when the habit of reading newspapers descended the social ladder, the coffee house
acquired a new lease of life. Sir Walter Besant observes:
They were then frequented by men who came, not to talk, but to read; the smaller tradesmen and the
better class of mechanic now came to the coffee-house, called for a cup of coffee, and with it the
daily paper, which they could not afford to take in. Every coffee-house took three or four papers;
there seems to have been in this latter phase of the once social institution no general conversation.
The coffee-house as a place of resort and conversation gradually declined; one can hardly say why,
except that all human institutions do decay. Perhaps manners declined; the leaders in literature
ceased to be seen there; the city clerk began to crowd in; the tavern and the club drew men from the
coffee-house.
A few houses survived until the early years of the nineteenth century, but the social side had
disappeared. As tea and coffee entered the homes, and the exclusive club house succeeded the
democratic coffee forum, the coffee houses became taverns or chop houses, or, convinced that they
had outlived their usefulness, just ceased to be.

54. REFERENCES
1. The Rise and Fall of the Coffee Houses by Caecilia Dance
2. High Street Hope by Harry Kyriakodis
3. The Lost World of the London Coffee House by Dr. Matthew
Green
4. www.webbooks.com