Tom King's Coffee House
Encyclopedia
Tom King's Coffee House (later known as Moll King's Coffee House) was a notorious establishment in Covent Garden
, London
in the mid-18th century. Open from the time the taverns shut until dawn, it was ostensibly a coffee house
, but in reality served as a meeting place for prostitutes
and their customers. By refusing to provide beds, the Kings ensured that they never risked charges of brothel-keeping, but the venue was nevertheless a rowdy drinking den and a favourite target for the moral reformers of the day.
, Essex
, and Elizabeth Cordell, the daughter of the Baronet Sir John Cordell. He was educated at Eton
and King's College, Cambridge
but was sent down (for reasons unknown) and eventually drifted to Covent Garden where he worked as a handyman, and met Moll in 1717. Moll, whose real name was Mary and whose surname is unknown, had been born in Vine Street in the slum district of St Giles
in 1696; her father was a cobbler
and her mother a fruit and vegetable seller in Covent Garden. She had gone into service at the age of fourteen, but found the work boring and so began hawking fruit and nuts around the Covent Garden area. Tom and Moll were married in 1717, but did not live together long. Tom began an affair, neglecting Moll, and when he eventually started to beat her, she left him and took up with William Murray
, who would later become the Earl of Mansfield and Lord Chief Justice. However, Tom amassed some money from working as a waiter, and, around 1720, he and Moll reunited and opened a coffee house in one of the shacks in Covent Garden which they rented from the Duke of Bedford
at the cost of £
12 a year.
s of day while running her stall, made connections with fashionable society during her dalliance with Murray, and Tom had aristocratic connections of his own. The patronage of these groups, coupled with hard work and a policy of remaining open all night, meant that Tom and Moll were soon able to afford to rent out a second and third of the shacks. The pretty black barmaid, Black Betty (also known as Tawny Betty), provided another attraction. The shacks can be seen in many of the contemporary depictions of the piazza
and features prominently in William Hogarth
's Four Times of the Day
(although it is rotated from its true position for the artistic effect of contrasting it with Inigo Jones
' Church of St Paul
).
By 1722, Tom King's Coffee House was already famed as place where anybody from the highest to the lowest could find a willing partner, and was frequented by many notables of the day: "all gentlemen to whom beds were unknown". Hogarth, Alexander Pope
, John Gay
, and Henry Fielding
were all visitors. Fielding mentions it in both The Covent Garden Tragedy and Pasquin and Tobias Smollett
in The Adventures of Roderick Random
. Of the three shacks, the largest and most famous was known as the Long Room, while the two smaller shacks were reserved for gambling and drinking respectively.
Despite the role of the coffee house as a meeting place for whores and their clients, Moll insisted that there were to be no beds in any of the shacks other than the bed she and Tom shared (which was in the roof and accessible only by a ladder which they pulled up behind themselves). This avoided the chance of prosecution for brothel-keeping which could attract a whipping and a term in prison. The proximity of many well-known brothels made the provision of beds unnecessary anyway; customers were encouraged to stay until they were too drunk to go home, at which point they would be escorted to one of the nearby bagnios. Nevertheless, many of the moral campaigners of the time were keen to shut down the establishment. Sir John Gonson
, a fervent supporter of the Society for the Reformation of Manners
and renowned raider of brothels, regularly sent informers to the coffee house to try and uncover some offence. To counter this, Tom, Moll and their cronies developed their own argot
, Talking Flash, to render their discussions impenetrable to outsiders, and if they were discovered and charged they bribed witnesses liberally to prevent the case succeeding.
Although Tom would drink with the customers, Moll always remained sober, looking out for trouble from the drunken patrons. While Moll, with the assistance of the hired bouncer
s, managed to curb the worst of the behaviour, there were still frequent fights on the premises and occasionally the violence spilled out into the surrounding area. In 1736, four men who had just left the coffee house disrupted a mass in the chapel of the Sardinian
Ambassador, and in 1737, two of the bouncers, Edward and Noah Bethune, were charged with assault.
By 1739, the Kings had acquired an estate at Haverstock Hill, close to Hampstead Heath
, and had built a villa and two houses. Tom King died the same year as a result of alcoholism.
paid a visit, accompanied by his equerry Viscount Gage
, but having been challenged to a fight for admiring the companion of one of his neighbours (who had not recognised him) he left immediately. Eventually, in June 1739, a riot erupted in the Long Room and spilled out in the piazza. Moll was charged, found guilty, and fined £200, sentenced to three months in prison and required to find sureties for her good behaviour for three years after her release. Moll refused to pay the fine on the grounds that it was both excessive and unwarranted and managed to get it reduced to £50. She suffered little from her stay in prison: her nephew William King took over the running of the coffee house and by bribing the guards Moll managed to get many of the comforts of home. She continued to run the coffee house until around 1745, when she retired to live in her villa at Haverstock Hill. She died on 17 September 1747, leaving a large fortune.
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in the mid-18th century. Open from the time the taverns shut until dawn, it was ostensibly a coffee house
Coffeehouse
A coffeehouse or coffee shop is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. It shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on...
, but in reality served as a meeting place for prostitutes
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
and their customers. By refusing to provide beds, the Kings ensured that they never risked charges of brothel-keeping, but the venue was nevertheless a rowdy drinking den and a favourite target for the moral reformers of the day.
Tom and Moll King
Tom King was born in 1694 to Thomas King, the squire in ThurlowThurlow
Thurlow is a surname, and may refer to:*Alan Thurlow , English organist*Bryan Thurlow , English professional football player*Clifford Thurlow , British biographer*Pud Thurlow , Australian cricketer...
, Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
, and Elizabeth Cordell, the daughter of the Baronet Sir John Cordell. He was educated at Eton
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
and King's College, Cambridge
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college's full name is "The King's College of our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge", but it is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the University....
but was sent down (for reasons unknown) and eventually drifted to Covent Garden where he worked as a handyman, and met Moll in 1717. Moll, whose real name was Mary and whose surname is unknown, had been born in Vine Street in the slum district of St Giles
St Giles, London
St Giles is a district of London, England. It is the location of the church of St Giles in the Fields, the Phoenix Garden and St Giles Circus. It is located at the southern tip of the London Borough of Camden and is part of the Midtown business improvement district.The combined parishes of St...
in 1696; her father was a cobbler
Shoemaking
Shoemaking is the process of making footwear. Originally, shoes were made one at a time by hand. Traditional handicraft shoemaking has now been largely superseded in volume of shoes produced by industrial mass production of footwear, but not necessarily in quality, attention to detail, or...
and her mother a fruit and vegetable seller in Covent Garden. She had gone into service at the age of fourteen, but found the work boring and so began hawking fruit and nuts around the Covent Garden area. Tom and Moll were married in 1717, but did not live together long. Tom began an affair, neglecting Moll, and when he eventually started to beat her, she left him and took up with William Murray
William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield
William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, SL, PC was a British barrister, politician and judge noted for his reform of English law. Born to Scottish nobility, he was educated in Perth, Scotland before moving to London at the age of 13 to take up a place at Westminster School...
, who would later become the Earl of Mansfield and Lord Chief Justice. However, Tom amassed some money from working as a waiter, and, around 1720, he and Moll reunited and opened a coffee house in one of the shacks in Covent Garden which they rented from the Duke of Bedford
Duke of Bedford
thumb|right|240px|William Russell, 1st Duke of BedfordDuke of Bedford is a title that has been created five times in the Peerage of England. The first creation came in 1414 in favour of Henry IV's third son, John, who later served as regent of France. He was made Earl of Kendal at the same time...
at the cost of £
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
12 a year.
Coffee house
The coffee house was an immediate success. Moll, who had been befriended by many of the leading courtesanCourtesan
A courtesan was originally a female courtier, which means a person who attends the court of a monarch or other powerful person.In feudal society, the court was the centre of government as well as the residence of the monarch, and social and political life were often completely mixed together...
s of day while running her stall, made connections with fashionable society during her dalliance with Murray, and Tom had aristocratic connections of his own. The patronage of these groups, coupled with hard work and a policy of remaining open all night, meant that Tom and Moll were soon able to afford to rent out a second and third of the shacks. The pretty black barmaid, Black Betty (also known as Tawny Betty), provided another attraction. The shacks can be seen in many of the contemporary depictions of the piazza
Piazza
A piazza is a city square in Italy, Malta, along the Dalmatian coast and in surrounding regions. The term is roughly equivalent to the Spanish plaza...
and features prominently in William Hogarth
William Hogarth
William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...
's Four Times of the Day
Four Times of the Day
Four Times of the Day is a series of four paintings by English artist William Hogarth. Completed in 1736, they were reproduced as a series of four engravings published in 1738. They are humorous depictions of life in the streets of London, the vagaries of fashion, and the interactions between the...
(although it is rotated from its true position for the artistic effect of contrasting it with Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones is the first significant British architect of the modern period, and the first to bring Italianate Renaissance architecture to England...
' Church of St Paul
St Paul's, Covent Garden
St Paul's Church, also commonly known as the Actors' Church, is a church designed by Inigo Jones as part of a commission by Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford in 1631 to create "houses and buildings fitt for the habitacons of Gentlemen and men of ability" in Covent Garden, London, England.As well...
).
By 1722, Tom King's Coffee House was already famed as place where anybody from the highest to the lowest could find a willing partner, and was frequented by many notables of the day: "all gentlemen to whom beds were unknown". Hogarth, Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
, John Gay
John Gay
John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...
, and Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones....
were all visitors. Fielding mentions it in both The Covent Garden Tragedy and Pasquin and Tobias Smollett
Tobias Smollett
Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle , which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens.-Life:Smollett was born at Dalquhurn, now part of Renton,...
in The Adventures of Roderick Random
The Adventures of Roderick Random
The Adventures of Roderick Random is a picaresque novel by Tobias Smollett, first published in 1748. It is partially based on Smollett's experience as a naval-surgeon’s mate in the British Navy, especially during Battle of Cartagena de Indias in 1741...
. Of the three shacks, the largest and most famous was known as the Long Room, while the two smaller shacks were reserved for gambling and drinking respectively.
Despite the role of the coffee house as a meeting place for whores and their clients, Moll insisted that there were to be no beds in any of the shacks other than the bed she and Tom shared (which was in the roof and accessible only by a ladder which they pulled up behind themselves). This avoided the chance of prosecution for brothel-keeping which could attract a whipping and a term in prison. The proximity of many well-known brothels made the provision of beds unnecessary anyway; customers were encouraged to stay until they were too drunk to go home, at which point they would be escorted to one of the nearby bagnios. Nevertheless, many of the moral campaigners of the time were keen to shut down the establishment. Sir John Gonson
John Gonson
Sir John Gonson was a British judge for nearly 50 years in the early 18th century, serving as a Justice of the Peace and Chairman of the Quarter Sessions for the City of Westminster...
, a fervent supporter of the Society for the Reformation of Manners
Society for the Reformation of Manners
The Society for the Reformation of Manners was founded in the Tower Hamlets area of London in 1691. Its espoused aims were the suppression of profanity, immorality, and other lewd activities in general, and of brothels and prostitution in particular....
and renowned raider of brothels, regularly sent informers to the coffee house to try and uncover some offence. To counter this, Tom, Moll and their cronies developed their own argot
Argot
An Argot is a secret language used by various groups—including, but not limited to, thieves and other criminals—to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations. The term argot is also used to refer to the informal specialized vocabulary from a particular field of study, hobby, job,...
, Talking Flash, to render their discussions impenetrable to outsiders, and if they were discovered and charged they bribed witnesses liberally to prevent the case succeeding.
Although Tom would drink with the customers, Moll always remained sober, looking out for trouble from the drunken patrons. While Moll, with the assistance of the hired bouncer
Bouncer (doorman)
A bouncer is an informal term for a type of security guard employed at venues such as bars, nightclubs or concerts to provide security, check legal age, and refuse entry to a venue based on criteria such as intoxication, aggressive behavior, or attractiveness...
s, managed to curb the worst of the behaviour, there were still frequent fights on the premises and occasionally the violence spilled out into the surrounding area. In 1736, four men who had just left the coffee house disrupted a mass in the chapel of the Sardinian
Kingdom of Sardinia
The Kingdom of Sardinia consisted of the island of Sardinia first as a part of the Crown of Aragon and subsequently the Spanish Empire , and second as a part of the composite state of the House of Savoy . Its capital was originally Cagliari, in the south of the island, and later Turin, on the...
Ambassador, and in 1737, two of the bouncers, Edward and Noah Bethune, were charged with assault.
By 1739, the Kings had acquired an estate at Haverstock Hill, close to Hampstead Heath
Hampstead Heath
Hampstead Heath is a large, ancient London park, covering . This grassy public space sits astride a sandy ridge, one of the highest points in London, running from Hampstead to Highgate, which rests on a band of London clay...
, and had built a villa and two houses. Tom King died the same year as a result of alcoholism.
Moll King's Coffee House
On Tom's death the coffee house became known as Moll King's Coffee House, but business continued much as before. Moll, however, took to drinking and became more quarrelsome, and the reputation of the shacks for bad behaviour and violence worsened. Moll would also occasionally fleece inebriated patrons by littering their tables with broken crockery and then presenting them a bill for the damages, confident that they were too drunk to realise that they were being taken advantage of. The patronage of fashionable society continued though: on one occasion even George IIGeorge II of Great Britain
George II was King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Archtreasurer and Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire from 11 June 1727 until his death.George was the last British monarch born outside Great Britain. He was born and brought up in Northern Germany...
paid a visit, accompanied by his equerry Viscount Gage
Thomas Gage, 1st Viscount Gage
Thomas Gage, 1st Viscount Gage Bt was the son of Joseph Gage of Sherborne Castle and Elizabeth Penruddock.He married Benedicta Maria Theresa Hall in 1717. Gage's first son was born in 1718...
, but having been challenged to a fight for admiring the companion of one of his neighbours (who had not recognised him) he left immediately. Eventually, in June 1739, a riot erupted in the Long Room and spilled out in the piazza. Moll was charged, found guilty, and fined £200, sentenced to three months in prison and required to find sureties for her good behaviour for three years after her release. Moll refused to pay the fine on the grounds that it was both excessive and unwarranted and managed to get it reduced to £50. She suffered little from her stay in prison: her nephew William King took over the running of the coffee house and by bribing the guards Moll managed to get many of the comforts of home. She continued to run the coffee house until around 1745, when she retired to live in her villa at Haverstock Hill. She died on 17 September 1747, leaving a large fortune.