Pasqua Rosée

Pasqua Rosée opened the first[1][2] coffeehouse in London in 1652.[3] The coffeehouse was located in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill.

Rosée was probably born into the ethnic Greek community in Ragusa in Sicily in the early seventeenth century.[4] In 1651 a merchant named Daniel Edwards, a member of the Levant Company and a trader in Turkish goods, encountered Rosée at Smyrna in Anatolia,[5] employed him as a manservant[6] and brought him back to Britain.

Once there, Rosée set up the establishment, its sign a portrait of Rosée.[7] In 1654, to circumvent resistance from local alehouse traders, he accepted Christoper Bowman as a business partner because he was a freeman of the city of London. Bowman had been the coachman of Alderman Thomas Hodges, Edwards' father-in-law.

The Jamaica Wine House now reputedly occupies the same space.[8]

References

  1. ↑ The Printer's Devil Project: The Coffee House
  2. ↑ A Albion Revisitada - By Luiz Carlos Soares - Page 226 - Google Books (Soares, Luiz Carlos. The Albion revisited: science, religion, illustration and commercialization of leisure in eighteenth-century England) (SOARES, Luiz Carlos. A Albion revisitada : ciência, religião, ilustração e comercialização do lazer na Inglaterra do século XVIII. Rio de Janeiro : 7Letras, 2007. 275 p.)
  3. ↑ Coffee House Tokens - Robert Thompson, London Numismatic Club, 3 October 2006
  4. ↑ Pasqua Rosée - Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  5. ↑ The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug By Bennett Alan Weinberg, Bonnie K. Bealer
  6. ↑ British Muslim Heritage - The London Coffee House
  7. ↑ "The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink" - 1652 handbill, advertising St. Michael's Alley, the first coffee shop in London. It is held in the British Museum.
  8. ↑ Jamaica Wine House, in the alley just off Cornhill, at the church of St Michael, occupies the Pasqua Rosée Coffee House site