Weird thought of the day: Coffee was really expensive in the first coffee houses of London. People could buy a cup of coffee for a penny in the early days of coffee houses (1650s). Not a modern volume of a cup, but a coffee cup of coffee. More like a saucer than a modern cup. There are so many references to these coffee houses as "penny universities", places where anyone could go and for a single penny take part of whatever conversation or discussion that was going on, at that moment. The underlining subtext being that a penny was all that was required so that anyone could enter: rich or poor. The entrance fee to the "university" was dirt cheap. But, was it? In London, in the 1650s, a quart of average beer cost a penny. A gallon of strong beer cost 3.5 to 4 pennies. A 1 pound loaf of bread also cost a penny. So, for 2 pennies, I could either buy 2 cups of coffee or a quart of beer and a full loaf of bread.
A penny might not sound like a lot of money, but an unskilled laborer, in London, might make 10 to 12 pennies for a full day's work; sun up to sun down. Would I pay 10% of my day's wages on a cup of coffee? No. Would I pay 10% of my day's wages on a week's worth of food? Yes. A penny for a cup of coffee might have been cheap for someone rich, but very expensive for the average working slob.
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| Scene from a 17th century English coffee house. Image courtesy of Bodleian Library, University of Oxford |
