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Lloyd's Coffee House
- thedudeabides5 6y agoYes, it’s weird to think that all of modern finance (insurance, banking, investment management) is an outgrowth of chalk boards at the 17th century equivalent of a Starbucks.
- nickff 6y agoLloyd's was very important for trade and shipping, but my understanding is that banking related more to the banci (tables and benches) outside the Ghetto Nuovo in Venice, as well as the Medici in Florence.
- cblconfederate 6y agoNot as weird as thinking of the ecosystem built out of social media. Social media are coffee houses without even coffee.
- aspenmayer 6y agoI never made the logical connection between the historical and modern iterations of kaffeeklatsch behaviors and social media, but you just did. Kudos.
- jayflux 6y agoIf you replace Starbucks with pubs and chalk boards with back of a handkerchief then it still exists today
- Daviey 6y agoThe tour of the modern Lloyd building is an activity I would quite recommend, but it is quite difficult to be eligible: https://www.lloyds.com/about-lloyds/uk-building-services/our-services/tours https://www.lloyds.com/about-lloyds/uk-building-services/our...
- mattlondon 6y agoLloyds tours are sometimes available as part of the Open House thing that happens each year.
- geocrasher 6y agoI wonder how much the fact that coffee was a hotly traded item played a role in this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coffee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coffee Apparently by 1675 when Lloyds opened, there had been over 3000 coffee houses and they were often used for "deep religious and political discussions among the populace" as the article says. It's no suprise that later, the very traders who brought coffee to the UK probably got talking about it at the coffee house they all spent time at. The only surprising part is that someone was quick enough to pick up on it and monetize it so successfully.
- jon-wood 6y agoI once read an interesting theory that coffee was a fundamental part of the renaissance because it gave people something to drink late into the night other than alcohol, provoking huge swathes of sober (and likely somewhat hyperactive) conversation between peers which would previously have devolved into drunken rambling.
- luxpir 6y agoNot forgetting the sugar trade supporting the wave of coffee consumption, all based on the major trade not yet mentioned yet in the thread; humans. Britain somehow managed to offshore the distasteful parts of that trade. The monetisation you mention must specifically include making fraudulent insurance claims on murdered humans and all the rest of it that still gets brushed under the carpet. So great were they at making returns on their capital through popular products and services that the applause drowned out the shameful practices. Doesn't sound wholly unfamiliar at this point in time either!
- nickff 6y agoThe Baltic Exchange has similar, interesting origins (which have little to do with the eponymous sea). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Exchange https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Exchange
- tetsuto 6y agoIf you’re in London I’d thoroughly recommend a drink in the Jamaica Wine House - it’s a pub in the square mile that used to be a coffee house from 1652. It’s an amazing place to see - you can really feel the age and history of the place. https://londonspubswherehistoryreallyhappened.wordpress.com/2018/12/13/jamaica-wine-house/ https://londonspubswherehistoryreallyhappened.wordpress.com/...
- tikkabhuna 6y agoOne of the entrances has a big stone along the bottom of the door and worn down over the years. http://www.citypubs.co.uk/pubs/thejamaicawinehouse_pic.html http://www.citypubs.co.uk/pubs/thejamaicawinehouse_pic.html
- tetsuto 6y agoLove it. Every time I step on I can almost feel the history of the place.
- angio 6y agoCity of London is amazing because of its mix of old and new, I used to work near the Jamaica Wine House and we would often go there for drinks after work. It's too bad the beer selection there is not great tho.
- loriverkutya 6y agoThere is a reason it is called wine house and not beer house.
- luxpir 6y agoRecent BBC doc on slavery mentioned the place as the hub for doing deals on humans. So there's that to consider too as you drink in the history.
- fabian_shipamax 6y agoor as traders call it, the jampot
- duncanawoods 6y agoI am quite curious about the old London coffee house culture. Why don't we have it today? Could we recreate it? Do we have it today in another form? Have they been mythologised? Is it an example of the September effect? It's talked about as being a place where relative strangers socialised and had substantive conversations on politics and philosophy that changed the history of ideas whereas today they are places to be "alone together". My best guess is that clientele were so filtered by opportunity/access such that they resembled a business cafeteria or a private members club more than a public venue. I guess the closest thing today might be a subject specific meetup. I suppose that if trying to recreate one, you might want to base it around the service of a novel stimulant that can't be found elsewhere that encourages frenzied socialisation. MDMA cafe anyone?
- darawk 6y ago> I am quite curious about the old London coffee house culture. Why don't we have it today? Could we recreate it? Do we have it today in another form? Have they been mythologised? Is it an example of the September effect? I think arguably we're posting on a modern one right now.
- duncanawoods 6y agoHeh, yeah, but it's so non-social I think it might be an equivalent to their letters page of The Times.
- chansiky 6y agoYes, but have people met here and spun off a new company from their conversations? There's something significant missing from comment based interactions that exist in IRL interactions.
- Kluny 6y agoSince it's HN, I would think probably, yes :) I personally have received a job interview on the strength of a comment I posted here.
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- fredley 6y agoInteresting how their coffee shop business did well not because of the coffee, but because they controlled the distribution of a certain type of valuable information.
- ak39 6y agoPretty much sums up the narrative. It had to be a non-alcoholic beverage because serious business was being conducted and the fact that it allowed folks to remain awake and energized for the long and boring accounting was even better.
- Jestar342 6y agoDid Tea end the coffee culture in London (and Britain)?
- fakedang 6y agoConsidering the Victorian who were heavy tea drinkers, no. Note that London was a hotbed for a lot of revolutionary people, including Karl Marx (who eventually settled down there).
- Jestar342 6y agoThat's my point - did Tea become the nouveau drink eliminating coffee? The UK had access to coffee in the 1600s but Tea didn't come until 200 years later with the colonies in east asia, right?
- fakedang 6y agoTea certainly eliminated coffee from the mid 19th century, but tea did not eliminate "coffee culture".
- wj 6y agoIt is set a couple hundred years later but this Charles Stress story is a fun read about a group of coffee lovers: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/toast/toast.html#club http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/toast/to...
- ak39 6y agoThanks. I love reading this type of grammar preppie school prose - a communication style designed for elites to recognize another deserving of status. It wasn’t until recently that I learned that most folks didn’t talk this way back then. This style of writing was what Ernest Hemingway “dismantled”. I love both Hemingway and Fitzgerald, btw ... concordantly, of course.
- billfruit 6y agoIn moving from Henry James to Hemmingway, a lot of magic of good writing was lost.
- dpeck 6y agoMichael Pollan has some good history and a lot of fun anecdotes about early coffee house cultures in his recent book Caffeine. It was interesting how each coffee house had a certain business/class associated with it. The book itself is well written and short, I consumed it as an audiobook and it came in around 4 hours.
- stakkur 6y agoA great look at coffee house culture at the time is in Tom Standage's A History of the World In 6 Glasses. At this time, coffee houses were the place to be. https://www.amazon.com/History-World-6-Glasses/dp/0802715524 https://www.amazon.com/History-World-6-Glasses/dp/0802715524
- JeremyNT 6y agoCoffee houses play an important role in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. If you have any interest in European history - especially scientific and financial elements - in the years around the beginning of the 18th century, I would highly recommend it.