Since the first three Pepys Mysteries novels are written and ready to go, I can zip forward a couple of months to Book 3: The Coffee House Murders (out 31 October), in which Pepys’s inquisitors, Abby Harcourt and Jacob Standish, become embroiled in coffee and politics.

London’s 17th century coffee houses were completely different to today’s Costas and Starbucks. For one thing, they were filled almost exclusively with men. Women were generally unwelcome, unless they were present in service of their household, for instance attending an auction in a coffee house.

Hence this wonderful handbill from 1674 titled ‘The Women’s Petition Against Coffee: Representing to Publick Consideration the Grand Inconveniences accruing to their Sex from the Excessive Use of that Drying, Enfeebling Liquor’. (I think we all know what the author means by ‘Enfeebling’ )

For today’s rabbit-hole link, let’s dive deeper into that petition – I think you’ll enjoy it!

In particular the paragraph that begins, “Some of our Sots pretend tippling of this boiled Soot cures them of being Drunk…” [a sot being a drunkard].

“Boiled soot”! (I have to confess, I share the writer’s view – it’s tea for me every day, in large quantities.)

“For when people have swill’d themselves with a morning draught of more Ale than a Brewer’s horse can carry, hither they come for a pennyworth of Settle-brain [aka coffee], where they are sure to meet enow [enough] lazy pragmatical Companions, that resort here to prattle of News, that they neither understand, nor are concerned in…”

… is so wonderfully withering. There’s more…

“and after an hours impertinent Chat, begin to consider a Bottle of Claret would do excellent well before Dinner; whereupon to the Bush [a tavern] they all march together, till every one of them is as Drunk as a Drum, and then back again to the Coffee-house to drink themselves suber [sober]; where three or four dishes a piece, and smoaking, makes their throats as dry as Mount Etna enflam’d with Brimflame [brimstone]; for that they must away to the next Red Lattice [another tavern] to quench them with a dozen or two of Ale, which at last growing nauseous, one of them begins to extol the blood of the Grape [wine or sack], what rare Langoon, and Racy Canary [???] may be had at the Miter [another tavern]: Saist thou so [say you]? cries another, Let’s then go and replenish there, with our Earthen Vessels: So once more they troop to the Sack-shop [wine-shop] till they are drunker than before; and then by a retrograde motion, stagger back to Soberize themselves with Coffee: thus like Tennis Balls between two Rackets, the Fopps [fops] our Husbands are bandied to and fro all day between the Coffee-house and Tavern, whilst we poor souls sit mopeing all alone till Twelve at night, and when at last they come to bed finoakt [this one eludes me, but I’d wager ‘sozzled’ works] like a Westphalia Hogs-head we have no more comfort of them, than from a shotten Herring or a dried Bulrush; which forces us to take up this Lamentation and sing,

…all together now…

Tom Farthing, Tom Farthing, where has thou been, Tom Farthing?
Twelve a Clock e’re you come in, Two a clock ere you begin, And
then at last can do nothing: Would make a Woman weary, weary,
weary, would make a Woman weary, &c.

Plus ca change.