Carolina Coffee Houseⁱ in London

i1670 – 1800: Carolina Coffee House

Coffee Houses became ubiquitous around London's financial district in the 17^th century. Many of these coffee houses were geo-themed, one such being the Coffee House on Birchen Lane dedicated to the Carolina Colony. It was frequented by some or all of the Lord's Proprietors and regularly handled ship's captains and mail to and from the colony. “The Carolina Coffee House was the place to meet ship captains headed to or just arrived from Charleston. If you wanted the hear the latest news about Carolina or had letters to send to family or friends there, you went to the Carolina Coffee House. ”

Following the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, that nation experienced a strong resurgence of trade and investment. A new species of financial speculators and investors arose who sought to take advantage of England’s growing trade networks around the globe, but the use of fixed, formal offices was not yet a regular practice. Looking for places to meet clients and partners for conversation, the businessmen of Cornhill turned to the new-fangled coffee houses that were popping up throughout the neighborhood. In contrast to ye olde fashioned taverns and ale houses that served beer, wine, and spirituous liquors to a diverse, often rowdy clientele, the coffee houses and coffee rooms of post-Restoration London catered to a more affluent customer looking for a more refined, business-friendly environment.

Coffee was the fashionable beverage du jour for English gentlemen of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, but coffee houses served a variety of stronger drinks as well. Besides the potent black stuff, these novel establishments offered another new and highly addictive commodity for which businessmen clamored: news. The proprietors of various Cornhill coffee houses, often called “coffeemen,” strove to acquire, collect, and share news of all sorts with their customers, who could then make business decisions based on the information at hand. If, for example, one knew that a hurricane had recently damaged the sugarcane crop in far-away Jamaica, one could reasonably predict that the price of sugar at the nearby Royal Exchange would soon increase, and then make or recommend investments accordingly. The advent of regular, printed newspapers was a direct outgrowth of this sort of commodification of information that began as a practical marketing tool in the coffee houses of late seventeenth century Cornhill.

The availability of news or “advices” from all over England, continental Europe, and the far-flung colonies drew men of commerce as well as educated men in general (sorry, ladies, but early coffee houses were not receptive to the presence of intelligent women). Discussions of politics, philosophy, art, music, and other erudite topics also enlivened many a coffee house, especially during their heyday in the eighteenth century. Some coffee houses even charged a penny for admission, a practice that inspired more than one writer to describe them as “penny universities.” From these dens of casual business and rarified banter emerged such cultural phenomena as the Royal Society, Freemasonry, Lloyd’s List, building insurance schemes, public museums, concert societies, periodic magazines, and the Carolina Colony.

To be clear, I know of no evidence suggesting that the creation of the Carolina Colony in 1663 was directly related to a series of conversations that took place in a London coffee house. Considering the fashion for coffee houses at that time, and considering the social life of the men who were responsible for creating Carolina, however, it would surprise me if at least some of the business conversations that led to the Carolina Charter of 1663 did not take place at one of the scores of coffee houses in the city. The eight Lords Proprietors to whom King Charles II granted Carolina were wealthy, well-connected men with a variety of business interests, but none of them ever visited their colonial possession. Instead, they associated and contracted with other Englishmen who promoted the colony as an investment opportunity and sought to recruit volunteers to travel abroad to settle the land. These subsequent but very necessary conversations must have taken place at coffee houses in the shadow of the Royal Exchange in Cornhill.

Within this urban landscape of coffee and conversation arose a number of establishments catering to specific business interests. Gentlemen interested in investing in or traveling to the colony of Virginia, for example, could visit the Virginia Coffee House in Cornhill and speak with agents and travelers who had first-hand knowledge of that place. If you needed to send a message to an associate in Jamaica, you went to the Jamaica Coffee House in St. Michael’s Alley and dropped a letter in the mail bag, which would travel outbound with the next ship departing for that island. If you were waiting to hear news of your cousin visiting the Holy Land, you turned a few steps to the east and made inquiries at the Jerusalem Coffee House. If you wanted to wag your finger in a scolding fashion at men investing in the slave trade, you turned back to St. Michael’s Alley into the African Coffee House. In short, Cornhill once hosted scores of coffee outlets that specialized in connecting English investors and families with business concerns and emigrants spread around the world.

Among the numerous geo-specific dens of caffeine was, of course, the Carolina Coffee House, which stood approximately two hundred feet southeast of the Royal Exchange. It was situated on the east side of a narrow footpath called Birchin Lane, just four doors south of Cornhill Street. We don’t know precisely when the Carolina Coffee House served its first cup of joe, but documentary evidence shows that it was in operation before 1682. London didn’t have a street address numbering system until the late 1760s, at which point the Carolina Coffee House was designated No. 25 Birchin Lane. Published directories of the English capital demonstrate that it remained at this location until at least 1831.[1]  

From time to time during its century and a half of operation, London’s Carolina Coffee House also shared space with the representatives of other colonial centers. Business directories from eighteenth-century London show that its name was occasionally expanded to the Carolina and Pennsylvania Coffee House, or the Pennsylvania, Carolina, and Georgia Coffee House, or the Amsterdam, Carolina, Pennsylvania & Pensacola Coffee House, or the Carolina and Honduras Coffee House. Regardless of who else was sharing the tables during its long tenure, businessmen, investors, travelers, and relatives could always visit this Birchin Lane fixture to find a direct line of communication with Charleston.[2]

To my knowledge, the earliest reference to the Carolina Coffee House appears in a pamphlet published in the Cornhill ward of London in 1682 by Samuel Wilson, titled An Account of the Province of Carolina in America. In the conclusion of that promotional work, the author invited anyone interested in learning more about the colony to ask for further information: “Some of the Lords Proprietors or myself will be every Tuesday [at] eleven of the clock at the Carolina Coffee House in Burching [sic] Lane near the Royal Exchange[,] to inform all people what ships are going, or any other things whatever.”

South Carolina businessman Henry Laurens spent many hours at the Carolina Coffee House during his several sojourns to London between the 1740s and the 1770s, and his surviving letterbooks contain numerous references to sending and receiving mail through that venerable establishment.[9] Similarly, twenty-two-year-old Peter Manigault (1731–1773) was studying law in London when he wrote to his mother in December 1753. Peter assured her that he did not waste time and money as many of his Carolina peers did in London. The other young bucks teased him, said the young Mr. Manigault, because “I refused to sit with [them] in the pit at the play-house, to have tobacco spit upon me out of the one-shilling gallery, but chose to go into the boxes, because that is the proper place for a gentleman to be seen in,” and because “I do not lounge away my mornings at that most elegant place the Carolina Coffee House, in Birchin Lane.”[10]

South Carolinians visiting London were not the only ones familiar with the Carolina Coffee House. The early newspapers of colonial-era Charleston demonstrate that its utility and fame crossed the pond to these shores as well.