LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES
London’s first coffee-house, or shack, was opened here in St. Michael’s Alley in 1652 by Pasqua Rosée, the Greek servant of an English Levant Company merchant he’d met in Turkey. His boss, Daniel Edwards, trading in the Middle East, had developed a taste for this Arabic drink and set Rosée up financially. It was an instant success, with Pasqua selling over 600 dishes of coffee a day, much to the consternation of local ale house and tavern keepers. Water being undrinkable, watered down ale and wine were the beverages of the day, meaning that people went around in an alcoholic haze.

Coffee, on the other hand, sharpened the mind and "came to be portrayed as an antidote to drunkenness, violence and lust; providing a catalyst for pure thought, sophistication and wit. Rosée had triggered a coffee-house boom and his ’bitter Mohammedan gruel’ would transform London forever".*

Rosée, in his advertisement "The Vertue of the Coffee Drink", claimed it as a panacea for all ills - it would prevent and cure dropsy, gout, and scurvy; help the digestion; quicken the spirit and lighten the heart; prevent drowsiness, making one fit for business; even being "very good to prevent mis-carryings in child-bearing women". As to the taste, it was variously described as "black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love", according to a Turkish proverb; or by an early drinker as "syrup of soot and the essence of old shoes"! Though they found the taste disgusting, "comparing it to ink, soot, mud, damp and, most commonly, excrement... it was addictive, a mental and physical boost to punctuate the working day and a gateway to inspiration; the taste was secondary".*
Another described it as a "Turkish-kind of drink...somewhat hot and unpleasant [but with] a good after relish".

Following an argument in 1657 with his business partner Pasqua Rosée, Kitt Bowman served coffee from a tent pitched in this very churchyard.

By 1663, there were 82 coffee-houses within the Roman walls of The City, whose clients were almost exclusively male. In 1674, the Women’s Petition Against Coffee bemoaned how the ’excessive use of that New-fangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor called COFFEE’ had enfeebled their husbands and made them impotent, turning each into ’a bedful of bones and a sapless corpse’; and worse still they were outdoing their wives in ’talkativeness and gossipping’, wasting their money for ’a little base, black, nasty, bitter, stinking, nauseous Puddle-water’!

By 1750 there were at least 550 coffee-houses (some claim there were between 3-8,000). They became magnets for debate and discussion, for making trade connections and exchanging news. They were known, especially in Oxford, as "Penny Universities", because you were charged a penny for entry and coffee and because their clientele was more learned than in the taverns! On arriving, a newcomer would be challenged with "Your servant, sir, what news from Tripoli?". Conversation was the raison d’être of coffee-houses - chatting and discussing with strangers the whole point.

Each coffee-house had its own particular character and purpose. JONATHAN’S traded the first stocks and shares, leading to The London Stock Exchange. "Merchants, ship-captains, cartographers and stockbrokers"* met at LLOYD’S becoming in due course Lloyds of London (now a world leading marketplace for insurance and reinsurance). HOGARTH’S in Clerkenwell was for London’s book publishers and Latin speakers - but didn’t last long! Coffee-houses became the place for printed news and intelligence; however, in 1688 King James II put a ban on the distribution of any newspapers in coffee-houses (except the London Gazette) to prevent criticism of the state. (Charles II had tried to ban coffee-houses in 1675, because of their "evil and dangerous effects", but was unsuccessful). CHAPTER coffee-house in Paternoster Row attracted London’s writers, publishers and booksellers; this housed the "Wet Paper Club" where they claimed "news was so fresh that the printed matter was still wet on the page"** when you read it.

"Anyone who was anyone in London had their favourite coffee-house", including notables such as "Samuel Pepys, Robert Hooke, John Locke, Christopher Wren, Edmund Halley, even Voltaire"***. Some notables even used that house as their postal address. Other coffee-houses attracted London’s literati - John Dryden and Alexander Pope frequented WILL’S, near Bow Street, where Dryden was the centre of attention, encouraging the exchange of satirical verses and lampoons. At BUTTON’S, authors such as Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Pope and Jonathan Swift met and writers could post their literary offering through the mouth of a marble lion’s head - the best of which were then published in Addison’s Guardian journal! Scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Hans Sloane were drawn to DON SALTERO’S coffee-house in Chelsea.

By the end of the 18th century, the popularity of the coffee-house had significantly diminished. Tea drinking was becoming popular, being a "sweeter, more palatable drink of choice...[and] cheap daily newspapers that could be read at leisure in the comfort of the home had damaged the central function of coffee-houses as hubs of intelligence."**

Since the mid-1990’s, there has been a re-emergence of the coffee-house culture but its products look and taste very different, from flat whites to oat milk cortados. By March 2023, the UK coffee industry contributed over £17 billion to the economy annually. We have come a long way from Pasqua Rosée’s coffee shack, here in St. Michael’s Alley.

* Dr Matthew Green
** Dr Matthew White
*** Levantine Heritage Foundation

The sign is located near the place where the first coffee house opened in London in 1652.

The place where the sign stands and where the first coffee house was was photographed on the same day Click for a larger image Click for a larger image

Some of the cafes featured on the sign were commemorated: Pasqua Rosée’s Head

 

Jonathan’s Cafe

 

, Lloyd’s Cafe