Cupfuls of History
Walking Lecture by
Kim Dewdney
Through one of my women's clubs, I was
fortunate to be able to attend a walking lecture by Kim Dewdney today on the
history of tea and coffee in London. She
had fascinating tales of the tea and coffee coming up the Thames and how some
small coffee houses grew into powerhouse financial businesses of today. We wandered around The City of London while
she talked and pointed out the various old warehouses or coffee shops of years
ago.
Devonshire
Square in The City of London is where the old East India Tea Company had their
warehouses. When the buildings were
redesigned for modern use, they left the old fire bell and left some of the
outer buildings the same as they had been in the 1600's. The East India Tea company was by far the
most successful business anywhere in the world at the time and was it the same
today, probably would be the same in the world today. They traded silk, spices, tapestries, rugs,
tea and had monopolies on many of their items.
Indeed, from 1600 to 1812, they did have the sole monopoly on tea and
thanks to Charles II’s wife Catherine; tea became the "in" and
popular drink to have.
Big boats weren’t able to come far
up the Thames so goods would be loaded onto smaller boats and brought further
up river to London. The river was quite
crowded in those days and it could take as long as 3 weeks to unload your cargo
and by that time, a good portion of it could have spoiled. In 1799, the West India Company started
building their own docks – specifically around Canary Wharf - and the East
India Company watched with great interest and decided they could do the
same. They didn’t build their warehouses
along the river though like other companies but built a road directly from
their docks to their warehouses where Devonshire Square is now located.
East India
Company had a sweet deal in that they had bonded warehouses. No one else did. This meant that when their goods came into
port, they could unload them immediately and take them into their warehouses
and then would pay tax on them as they were sold. Other companies didn’t have this benefit so
as they came into port, their captain or cargo master would have to go to the
harbormaster and check in, then to the customs office which was a long room
with lots of tables and clerks using primitive adding machines and
ledgers. They would have their bill of
lading with them and as each item was taxed at a different rate and a ship
might have as many as 200 different kinds of items on it, it would take a long
time to calculate the amount of tax that a ship owed the government. Finally, maybe one or two or three days
later, the cargo master would take his tax bill to the long table at the end of
the hall and pay his bill. The bill was
then stamped and only then was he allowed to return to the ship and start
unloading his cargo. East India Company
was able to bypass all this with their bonded warehouses. They had 4000 men working their docks and
warehouses and took all their tea to warehouse #6 in the chests that it had
traveled the seas. They also had 400
clerks taking care of all the paperwork.
Like I said
earlier, they didn’t deal in just tea but also ivory. A very old photo shows a man standing in
front of the ivory warehouse. He looks
to be about average height but the ivory “hill” was over twice as tall behind
him. The Cutler family was makers of
knives and had a factory close by as the ivory was important in the handles of
their knives. At this point in history,
there were no forks and all spoons were wooden but knives were metal with ivory
handles. The Cutler family still owns a
good portion of the land around that area and many of the current businesses
pay them rent for the land.
By 1700
there were 3000 coffee houses in The City of London and the area of
Westminster. And we thought that a
Starbucks on each corner was a bit much! (As an aside, Starbucks currently is
trying to go with fair trade beans totally but there aren’t enough of
them. Their siren logo was to “lure”
everyone in for coffee. Their tea isn’t
that great and they conducted a poll about 18 months ago to ask if people would
come in for tea if it was properly brewed and brought to the table and
served. Starbuck was the name of the
first mate in the Hermann Melville tale “Moby Dick”)
As another
aside, the “Gherkin” building in London, the one that looks like a Gherkin
pickle, stands on the spot where the Baltic Exchange had their offices. The Baltic Exchange is now in their annex
building next door. The Gherkin got the
land after a couple of IRA (Irish Republican Army) bombs demolished the Baltic
Exchange in the 1990’s. Only saved was
one of their board rooms which was eventually sold to Estonia, a Balkan
country. Also saved were the stained
glass windows, in shards and pieces and filling dozens of bins, but saved they
were. Some people took on the project of
putting the windows back together and they are now on display at the Maritime
Museum in Greenwich.
Back to
history of tea and coffee, the Baltic Exchange also dealt with trading coffee
and such but has evolved into a shipping exchange in that anything, ship or
airplane, that is chartered, goes through them.
If someone/some company, doesn’t have their own airplane or ship, they
go to the Baltic Exchange to rent one or rent space.
Lloyd’s of
London started as a coffee house. With
3000 in the area, Mr. Lloyd needed a hook to bring people into his coffee
shop. He would send small boys running
to the waterfront everyday where they would climb trees and try to spot ship
flags. As soon as they had one
identified, they would run back to Mr. Lloyd and tell him that such and such a
ship was in the Thames and at such and such a location. People who had money invested in the ships or
cargo would come into Lloyd’s coffee shop and get the news on the incoming
ships. Mr. Lloyd also put out a
newsletter everyday of everything he could find on ships all over the world and
where they were, what they had, when they were coming, etc. etc. Just anything he could find on shipping. This continued to evolve until he became
insurance. Lloyd’s insures everything
except life insurance. Some of the odder
things insured today: Elton John’s fingers and Tina Turner’s legs. He would also insure outcomes on races and
such.
People were
happy to come to Lloyd’s and get shipping information and close to the Baltic
Exchange, they could work on getting their shipments out to sea as well. But of course they wanted to have a good ship
so Lloyd’s registry of ships developed out of this coffee house as well. Lloyd would hire men to go check out a ship
and see if it was seaworthy. They developed
a system of checking the hull with categories being from A to E. The best category was A. Then they checked the fittings and workings
of the ship and would rate it from 1 to 5.
One was the best. So our saying
of A1 comes from this rating that it is the best and everything is good.
Another
thing Lloyd did was have excellent service in his coffee shop. His waiters were in red jackets and tails
with a top hat. Today there are still
men working in Lloyd’s at the entrance with red tails and a top hat and called
waiters but I don’t think they serve coffee anymore. Where Lloyd’s is now is where the East India
HQ building was. So tea came up the road
they built to the warehouses and past their HQ building. Four times a year, they would hold tea auctions
which were quite loud and smelly affairs.
Tea smells would permeate the air and tea dust as well.
Leadenhall
Market, in business in the same location since 1300, was next door to the East
India Company HQ. They were the first to
take advantage of the auctions and started marketing tea by the seasons such as
adding orange for the spring and spices like cloves and cinnamon for winter and
campaigned to make people think they needed to buy a lot to hold them over
until the next auction or next season.
Daniel
Edwards – stepping back in time a big now – was a traveler who liked going new
places to find things of interest. He
went to Turkey and found coffee and brought it back with him along with a new
manservant, Pasque Rosee, a Turk of dark skin and large turban. Daniel soon discovered that more and more of
his friends were enjoying coming around for a drink of coffee so he set up a
coffee shop in 1652 and put a sign on Pasque Rosee and had him stand outside
for people to see and come into his shop for coffee. In later times, this became the Jamaican
coffee house and also a post office for people sending things to Jamaica. When Daniel still had the shop, there would
be a lot of barrels rolled over the door so the stoop today is bowed in the middle. There were also boxes on the side of each
door. If you were in a hurry, you could
put your money in the box. The
proprietor would see you and seat you in a special section to get speedy
service. The box was called
T.I.P.S. To Insure Prompt Service.
At the time
of these 3000 some coffeehouses, women were allowed to own them, to run them
and to work in them BUT they could not drink the coffee. It was for men only.
Jonathan’s
coffee house was also in this area and it evolved into the stock exchange. In the 1570’s there was the Royal Exchange
(during the Tudors). Because it was the
place to do business, it was quite noisy so people would meet there and then go
to Jonathan’s to conduct their business.
Once finished, they would return to the Royal Exchange to sign the
paperwork. Now there is a private
business club there and none of us, even Kim our guide, had any idea what that
meant.
The Church
of St. Mary’s around the corner is where Lloyd was buried. In 1892, the underground was expanding at the
Bank station which is quite large. They
were going to tear down the church which didn’t set well with the parishioners
nor with history buffs. A compromise
arose in that the underground bought the crypt and land under the church but
the church stayed. Everyone that was
buried in the crypt, including Mr. Lloyd, was moved to another burial
site.
At one
time, John Newton was the preacher at St. Mary’s and he was the man who wrote
Amazing Grace and was also instrumental in anti-slavery laws in England.
When Oliver
Cromwell died and Charles II was invited back to England to be king, he had
figured out he wanted to live like the kings of France which meant palaces and
lots of money. He didn’t have money
though so he had his advisors look around for a rich wife and he found Catherine
of Breganza, Portugal. She was a tea
drinker but up until her time, most of the tea drinking in England was for
medicinal purposed and it could cure anything: diarrhea, constipation,
tiredness, took over stimulated, etc. etc.
Catherine
comes sailing into England with many ships following her full of her
dowry. As the court wants to help her
and impress her after a difficult seasick filled journey, they ask what she
wants when she gets here and she asks for a cup of tea. No one knew how to get her one so they got
her a mug of English Ale which put her in bed for three days before she even
met Charles. But in the end, she starts
brewing tea for her ladies in waiting and as everyone wants to get into her
good graces, everyone starts drinking tea.
Another aside. Henry Tate started out as an assistant
grocer. Makes his way to London to be a
grocer. He buys the patent for sugar
cubes. Prior to this patent, sugar came
in large cones and it would be the job of a servant to shave off cubes off this
large cone for the day. The shavings
were not uniform and of all sizes. Tate
reasoned that a certain guaranteed size of sugar cube would make him rich and
he was right. He loved art and collected
it and decided to gift it to the city. The
city got snobby and didn’t think they wanted any art from someone in trade so
he said, OK by me, I’ll build my own gallery and library too so he did and is
now one of the most visited art galleries in London and the world.
One last
bit. When the East Indianman ships were
carting their goods all over the world, they would leave England in March and
arrive in the Far East in October. They
wouldn’t be able to return to England until September or October of the next
year. It was an 18 month journey. When the Americans came up with clipper
ships, it cut the journey to 3 months.
But this was short lived as the Suez Canal was opened and that meant steamships
took over from Clippers.
