Talk:English coffeehouses in the 17th and 18th centuries

temp page
A temporary page has been created to replace the current page.Johnnybird 15:47, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

70's?
I think penny universities date back to the 18th Century, and not to the 70's (e.g. ). It seems odd that this article begins with and focuses on the University of California, Santa Cruz. —Pengo 14:03, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Facts
There seems to be a general lack of sources regarding the coffee houses: both wiki articles (this and "English Coffehouses in 17th and 18th century) link to a student operated website who's only source seems to be "Ellis, Aytoun. 1956. The Penny Universities; A History of the Coffee-houses. London: Secker & Warburg."

I cannot find any other sources of these so called "runners" and whatnot. Maybe my internet searching is not up to par. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.7.14.247 (talk) 14:42, 15 October 2010 (UTC)


 * It's worth pointing out that the OED, which lists dozens of historical "penny X" compound words, doesn't enter "penny university" at all, and the earliest citation for the phrase to be returned by a Google Books search is from 1817. Searching for "penny universities" does return one ostensible 18th-century hit on Google Books, but the contents aren't available online, so it's impossible to tell if it's for real. In any case, it doesn't seem to have been a common term for coffeehouses in the 18th century. 206.208.105.129 (talk) 20:21, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Merge proposal
I've proposed that the stub article Penny University be merged here, as it's really just an alternate name for the same place. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 17:13, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Agreed - I agree that Penny University should be merged with English coffeehouses. The article is only a stub and would make more sense in the aforementioned article. Aol1044 (talk) 20:02, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Merge - That makes sense to me. --Thnidu (talk) 20:08, 11 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Merged.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  17:17, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Dubious claim of general sobriety of society only after the introduction of coffee
Greetings, I do find the section about Financial Markets a bit irritating, specifically the claim that "Until the mid-seventeenth century, most people in England were either slightly — or very — drunk all of the time" and especially "... as people thought clearly for the first time."

These claims are stated in the source, but I find them highly dubious. While it is probably true that people drank watered down alcoholic beverages, I doubt that everyone was drunk all the time. If someone could provide a more scientific source to back up this claim, or one that debunks it as a myth, I'd appreciate it. --LordPeterII (talk) 13:57, 23 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Bloomsbury's new book by E. Wesley Reynolds, Coffeehouse Culture in the Atlantic World, 1650-1789 (2022) may help in resolving the issue of alcohol and coffee. The work claims that it's impossible to separate coffee from alcohol consumption inside noted coffeehouses like Mary-le-Bone Gardens Coffee House in London. This was particularly true of coffeehouses in Early America. The book states, "Because coffeehouses came later to America and because licensure was different there than in England, coffeehouses in America often went by the designation of tavern rather than coffeehouse, but they were equivalent to the London coffeehouse in two respects: they sold coffee and they distributed news. The American coffeehouse tavern was just that: a tavern which also sold coffee" (page 8). 2600:6C48:6C7F:FF52:3841:3378:3BF7:2AC9 (talk) 23:57, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Hey, I totally agree. Even with the source material stating this, it's still highly speculative language and certainly not neutral. Historians aren't even certain the claim that people drank more alcohol than water is true, and even in contemporary experience the effect alcohol has varies greatly by individual, time of consumption, and type of alcohol. Even setting aside the common use of low-ABV "small beer," it is an often-claimed but little-cited "fact" that people drank mostly alcohol in the past. For one thing, diseases weren't fully understood as being part of water-borne bacteria, meaning less incentive to avoid drinking it, and anyway a number of waterbearing pumps and waterwheels were implemented throughout London through the 17th century to ensure access to relatively potable water. Aerrow013 (talk) 16:45, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

aOrigin of the UK Stock Exchange
Jacob's'Coffee House City of London. Believed to be the origin of the UK's Stock Exchange? Dave Black Wiki 001 (talk) 10:30, 18 August 2023 (UTC)


 * This is not what the article on the London Stock Exchange suggests. Sbishop (talk) 11:16, 18 August 2023 (UTC)