Public Drinking in the Early Modern World:

Voices from the Tavern, 1500–1800

Until recently the role of the public drinking house has been approached from elitist, folkloric and anecdotal perspectives. The work of a new generation of social historians, however, has raised the tavern’s profile in the academic consciousness and confirmed its position within the mainstream of social and cultural history. It is now recognized that an understanding of the centrality of public drinking to the development of both elite and popular culture is vital to studies of social behaviour. The study of taverns has also been at the forefront of emerging interest in the history of consumption and material culture, and has contributed to a richer understanding of economic history. Constructions of gender and identity are also visible through research into the patterns of behaviour and discourse in and around the public house.

This five-volume reset edition presents a wide-ranging collection of primary sources which uncover the language and behaviour of local and state authorities, of peasants and town-dwellers, and of drinking companions and irate wives. The documents are translated and set in their social and historical context, providing a multidisciplinary collection that will be of great importance to scholars of all areas of social and cultural history of the early modern period.

The vast majority of this material is published here for the first time, ensuring that the collection will open up new avenues of research. Volume 1 draws heavily from the Parisian police archives and includes inspectors’ reports, complaints by the general public and details of court cases to build a picture of drinking in early modern France. Volumes 2 and 3 address public drinking in the Holy Roman Empire through a variety of chronicles, civic ordinances, court records, travel reports and surveys of public houses. Volume 4 locates taverns within a broader analysis of America’s public houses, drawing on visual material as well as journal entries, business reports and newspaper articles, while Volume 5 covers early modern England, and includes legal documents, evidence relating to the commercial and fiscal attributes of the public drinking infrastructure as well as parliamentary acts and royal proclamations. Each volume is accompanied by editorial introductions and is comprehensively annotated to provide readers with a high-quality resource of scholarly material.

Contents

Volume 1: France

The Purveyance of Drink
A global view of the wine trade, from Lettres patentes, 1 July 1698 & Archives de la Seine; Correspondence between wine sellers and their suppliers; Documents on the organization of the wine merchants guild, Collection Lamoignon, 15 February 1676 & Lettres patentes, 29 November 1680; Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris (1782–1788) [extracts]; Jacques-Louis Ménétra, Journal de ma vie, ed Daniel Roche (1982) [extracts]; A complaint brought to a police commissioner; The statutes of the limonadiers, 28 January 1676; Police ordinances, 5 November 1677; Arrêts de Parlement, 20 January & 1 July 1678; A royal edict, July 1705; Nicolas Delamare, Traité de la Police (1705–1738) [extracts]; Louis Liger, Le Voyageur fidèle (1715) [extracts]; J C Nemeitz, Les Sejours de Paris (1727) [extracts]; Charles Montesquieu, Persian Letters (1721) [extracts]; Félicité Ducrest de Saint-Aubin de Genlis, Mémoires inédits sur le XVIIIe siècle (1825) [extract]; Jean-Joseph Vadé, “La Pipe cassée,” [nd] [extract]; André Charles Cailleau, “Le Waux hall populaire” (1769) [extract]; Charles Collé, “Scènes détachées de la guinguette” (1754) [extract]; Complaints to police commissioners: 23 September 1711, 5 February 1720, 17 June 1731
Regulatory Regimes
Nicolas Delamare, Traité de la Police (1705–1738) [extracts]; Jacques Peuchet, Collection des lois, ordonnonces et règlements de la police depuis le XIIIe siècle jusqu’à l’année 1818 (1818–1819) [extracts]; Duchesne, Code de la police ou analyse des règlements de police (1767) [extracts]; Encyclopédie méthodique: jurisprudence (1782-1791) [extracts]; Edme de la Poix de Fréminville, Dictionnaire ou traité de la police generale des villes, bourgs, paroisses et seigneuries de la campagne (1758) [extracts]; Public Ordinances: 22 December 1700, 10 March 1719, 28 April 1724, 30 August 1726, 2 December 1729 (Archives de la Prefecture de Police)
Publicans and the Public
Reports of the night watch and inspectors; Police rulings of 17 October 1698 & 18 December 1699; Complaints against tavern keepers: 19 June 1701, 6 September 1751, 28 September 1731, 5 April 1751, 19 June 1741, 5 October 1711; Complaints against customers: 23 August 1751, 22 July 1731, 26 October 1751, 5 December 1741, 10 April 1711, 20 May 1751
Violence and Honour
Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris (1782–1788) [extracts]; Description of a murder in a tavern, 30 September 1751; Fights and insults: 12 August 1720, 9 January 1751, 21 October 1691, 19 May 1691
Customers and Customs
Documents attesting to: guild members’ talking about work, customers singing, “rough music”, business deals and plying potential trade with drink, and regular clubs; Literary groups, in Louis de Mailly, Entretien des caffés de Paris (1702) [extract]; Witnesses in a murder case, 10 May 1741; A card game played “to pass the time” which lead to a fight and a police case, 29 January 1731; A group of friends betting on a game of boulles, 18 May 1751; A fight beginning with a humorous wager, 31 March 1751
Family and Gender
A mother has her daughter arrested for drunkenness and debauchery, 1 December 1751; Husbands make official complaints against their wives: 29 December 1712 & 1 November 1751; Women drinkers: 21 August 1721 & 1 May 1731; Insults to women in taverns: 30 September 1721, 29 January 1751 & 23 October 1701; Women instituting proceedings for “divorce” (sépération des biens) against husbands spending too much time or money in taverns: 17 August 1731, 18 August 1721 & 10 February 1731; General complaints against drunkenness: 18 August 1751, & 14 April 1711

Volumes 2 & 3: Holy Roman Empire

Legal Framework
Charles V’s Imperial Edict against pledging healths, the Diet of Augsburg, 1530; Tavern-related business, the Swiss Diet [extracts]; The Bavarian Police Ordinance of 1616 [extracts]; Bern’s key Public House Ordinance of 1628; Gasthausordnung of the Bavarian Elector Maximilan, 1631; Les Loix et Statuts du Pais de Vaud et les principales ordonnances (1730) [extracts]
Taxation
Augsburg’s Excise Tax Ordinance [extracts]; Sample pages from Civic Budget books; The interrogation of Balthasar Gausmeir, a beer inspector accused of turning a blind eye to the false reporting of beer production by local brewers [extracts]; Example of an ordinances passed in Augsburg forbidding drinking tax-free in villages outside of the city & An example of a “drink pass” signed by the mayor giving permission to attend such a function; Selections from a series of entries in the Civic Budget books of Mindelheim (1646–1699), in which reasons are given for fluctuations in drink tax income; Seventeenth-century wine tax returns from public houses around Bern; Brown Beer tax return from public houses, District of Dachau/Bavaria (1780s)
Surveys of Public Houses
Register of public houses in the canton of Zurich 1530; Registers of public houses in the principality of Bavaria 1580, 1806; Registers of public houses in the canton of Bern 1628, 1688, 1743, 1789
Legal Theory
Johann Gotthard Böckel, Tractatus juridico-politicus de jure hospitiorum, Vom Gast-Recht (1677) [extracts]; W X A Freiherr von Kreittmayr, Anmerkungen über den Codicem Maximilianeum bavaricum civilem (Munich, 1758) [extracts]
Local Authorities
Legal Framework
The Augsburg Police ordinances of 1537, 1580, 1621 & 1683 [extracts]; Untitled ordinance, Ulm, 1527 [extracts]; Statute rule prohibiting publicans from lodging beggars unless they are members of mendicant religious orders (1544); Memmingen Wine and Innkeeper Ordinance of 1554, establishing selling of wine as a “free trade” [extract]; Ordinances governing the elite drinking rooms (the Merchant Drinking Room ordinance of 1587 and the Lord’s Drinking Room ordinance with articles appearing between 1481 and 1581) [extracts]; Nurnberg’s brandy ordinances of 1557 and 1572; Wartime decrees issued in Augsburg (1619, 1631) and Nördlingen (1631) tying restrictions on music, dance, and tavern games to sin, God’s wrath, and war; Augsburg Wineseller Ordinance, 1688, placing limits on licensing wine taverns similar to those governing brewing licenses; Augsburg Public House ordinance, 1745, which expresses continued concern with gambling, drunkenness, and other frivolous behavior, and illustrates both a broadening of the definition of public houses to include coffee and brandy houses and a loosening of some standard restrictions (such as closing times); Wedding Ordinances, Augsburg 1550, 1575, and the wedding section of the Police Ordinance, 1683 [extracts]
Seigneurial and Communal Dues
Samples from tavern dues listed in Bernese registers; Range of dues payable from the Neuherberg Inn near Munich (1754); Wine retailing arrangements on patrician estates in the Aargau (described by Müller, World of the Tavern) [extracts]
Ecclesiastical Authorities
Legal Framework
Sittenmandat of the Republic of Bern 1530 (restricting drinking occasions/times); Counter-Reformation mandates against Sunday frolics and profanation of sacred ground
Guides to Behaviour
Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg, ‘Gluttony and drunkenness: A sermon on Sebastian Brant's “Ship of Fools” (1498); Martin Luther, ‘Sermon on Soberness and Moderation against Gluttony and Drunkenness’, I Pet. 4:7-11, May 18, 1539; Johann Jacob Breitinger, ‘XXXVI. Synodal-Sermon. Ward gehalten im Synodo Galli, Dienstags / den 22. Oct. 1639. Betreffend: Die Wirths-Häuser’ [Zurich antistes preaching about / against public houses]; Sermon by Neuenegg, Bern village preacher against preferring public houses to the House of God
Travel reports from across the centuries
Hans von Waldheim (15th); Erasmus, ‘Diversoria’ (16th); Antonio De Beatis (early 16th); Johannes Stumpf (16th); Fynes Moryson (c1600); Ellie Brackenhoffer (1630s); Sophie la Roche (late 18th); Giacomo Casanova (late 18th); Christoph Meiners (late 18th); William Coxe (late 18th)
Travel Manuals/Conduct Literature
Peter Ambrosius Lehmann, Die vornehmsten europäischen Reisen (1703) [extracts]; Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis, Manuel du Voyageur ou recueil de dialogues, de lettres etc. suivi d'un itinéraire raisonné à l'usage des François en Allemagne et des Allemands en France (1799) [extracts]; Adolph Freiherr von Knigge, Über den Umgang mit Menschen [1790] [extracts]
Taverns in Diaries, (Auto-)Biographies/Selbstzeugnisse
Butzbach, Odeporicon (early 16th century); Thomas Platter, Lebensbeschreibung (16th cntury); ‘Die Chronik Josts von Brechershäusern’ [17th century village chronicle of a prosperous Bernese peasants, incl. reflections on drinking culture]; Caspar Preis, Bauernleben im Zeitalter des Dreissigjährigen Krieges: Die Stausebacher Chronik des Caspar Preis 1636–67; Goethe (late 18th century); Ulrich Bräker (late 18th century)
Drama, Comedy and Novels
Sample tavern-pranks from Eulenspiegel’s Ein kurtzweilig Lesen von dil Ulenspiegel (1515); Hans Rudolf Manuel, ‘Das Weinspiel [1548]’ (carnival play set in tavern); Grimmelshausen’s short stories, novels, e.g. Das wunderbarliche Vogelnest, pt 1 [extracts]; Lessing, Minna von Barnhelm (1763) [extract]
Moral and Medical Literature
Sebastian Franck, ‘Von dem greuewlichen laster der trunckenhayt [1528] [extract]; Vincentius Opsopoeus, De arte bibendi libri tres (1536) [extract]; Matthäus Friderich, ‘Der Sauffteufel’ (1552) [extract]; A warning against drunkenness presented to the members of the Lord’s and Merchant’s Drinking Societies by the Augsburg physician Achilles Pirminius Gasser in 1570; Guarinonius’ moral tract, Die Grewel der Verwüstung menschlichen Geschlechts (1610) [extract]; Johann Heinrich Tschudi, ‘Das VII. Gespräch. Von Gast-Höfen, oder Wirts-Häuseren’ (1719); Examples of medical discourse discussed in Bacchus
Other Genres (chronicles, architectural treatises, encyclopaedia, topographies …)
Excerpt from a chronicle describing the mythical founding of the Drei Mohren (“Three Moors”), a famous Augsburg inn, based on the generous hospitality of the innkeeper; Chronicle entries (from brewer Georg Siedler’s unpublished chronicle, and from Markus Welser’s Chronica der weitberuempten Keyserlichen Freyen und deß H. Reichs Statt Augspurg in Schwaben, published in 1595) recording intermittent raises in drink taxes and the chroniclers’ reactions to them; Johann Heinrich Zedler, Großes vollständiges Universal-Lexicon (1760s); Johann Willebrand, Grundriß einer schönen Stadt (1775); Lorenz von Westenrieder, ‘Beschreibung des churfürstl. Landgerichts Dachau’, in his Beyträge zur vaterländischen Historie (1792) [extract]
Bibliography of manuscripts, printed sources and secondary literature
Publicans, Staff and Premises
Owners and Tenants
Responsibilities
A selection of publicans’ oaths
Professional Organization
Extracts from the records of a Wirte- or Weinschenk craft; Brewing ordinances (1549, 1659) establishing requirements and fees for obtaining a brewing license [extracts]; Petition from Elias Mair, a former city official, to open an upper-class inn on Augsburg’s Wine Market in 1587; Council decree from 1588 forbidding the transfer of brewing rights from one house to another; Petition asking for protection for full-service and full-time wine publicans in Augsburg from temporary wine sellers, normally practicing craftsmen, who bought wine to sell “from the tap” (1588) [extract]; Response from the authorities denying the petition [extract]; Supplication and response in the 1558 case of Regina Voglerin, who passed brewing rights inherited from her father on to her husband, and now petitions to pass them through her daughter to her son-in-law; The interrogation of Hans Lang, an Augsburg innkeeper who complained about restrictions placed on drinking in local inns during a grain shortage in the 1590s [extract]; Case of a wine innkeeper from 1624 who is given 14 days to buy wine for his inn or lose his license
Personal Life and Commercial Fortunes
The account book of Hans von Herblingen, innkeeper at Thun/Bern, c1400 [extracts]; Tavern-evidence from family chronicle by Cologne burgher Hermann von Weinsberg (1518-97); A wealthy brewer’s will from 1641; Bankruptcy proceedings against a Bernese innkeeper (1688)
Servants and Staff
Upwardly mobile career of tavern-servant Anton Sperzger, culminating in his tenure of the Elefant inn at Brixen; Sexual relations with patrons & infanticide cases
Premises
Types and Privileges
Dachau council minutes, 13 July 1650 [extract]; Confirmation of restricted tavern privileges, (1786); Lease of the Lion Inn at Idstein near Frankfurt, 1692; Lease of a wine tavern at Allenlüften/Bern; Grant of Erbrecht for tenants of Bavarian inns at Perlach and Neuherberg/Bavaria
Buildings, Dimensions, and Interiors
Inventories, workmen’s descriptions, builders’ prospects of planned inns; Georg Engelhart/Matheis Bosch court case revealing interior layout of a public house (Augsburg, 1593); Inventory of Elefant, Brixen/Bressanone; Goethe describing murals and wall decorations of inns in Central Switzerland
Food, Drink and Services
Food and Drink
Augsburg Wine Ordinance, 1528; Maximilian’s Gasthausordnung, 1631 [extracts]; Lease of Worb inn, 1555 [extract]; Exuberant tavern meal ordered by Bernese patricians at Jegenstorf; Range of wines stored by Bernese inns according to tax registers; Evidence for tea/coffee utensils at Spiezwiler/Bern inn; Eighteenth-century travellers’ reports on meals in public houses; Use of sulphur to preserve wine; Range of drinks offered by Bavarian inns, from 1806 register
Services and Infrastructure
Travel Functions
Evidence for postmaster-publicans (e.g. Weiß dynasty at Fürstenfeldbruck/Bavaria); Travel report evidence of information services
Card and Board Games
Interrogation of Christoph Schwartz in 1542 concerning a fight over cards in an Augsburg inn; Description from court records of a tavern gambling bout that led to an arrest in Nördlingen in 1571, which demonstrates elements of risk-taking and “deep play” among persons of lower status; Interrogations of a group of gamblers in Augsburg in 1593 [extracts]; Confession of professional card shark Martin Bleyer, 1655
Music, Songs and Dancing
Interrogation of the 17-year-old Paulus Schuster, wedding singer from Gablingen, arrested in 1587 for singing “shameful songs” in public houses; Interrogation of the bagpiper Christoph Kraus in 1590, arrested for playing in Augsburg public houses in violation of local ordinances; Interrogation of journeyman locksmith Abraham Metzg, arrested in 1592 for requesting that the weaver Hans Daniel sing a slanderous song for him in a public house; Fines for Neuenegg villagers attending dances in neighbouring Catholic territory; Swiss peasants singing psalms in public houses; Foreign travellers hearing ‘folk’ songs/dances in Alpine hospices
Other entertainments
Evidence for inns as venues of carnival plays; Description by the traveling knight Hans von Schweinichen of a reception held in Augsburg’s Lord’s Drinking Room in 1575, describing games and amusements available to the local elite; ‘When wee were at dinner [at an Ulm inn, 1592], a Tumbler came in, and .. hee stood vpon his head and dranke a measure of wine, which seemed strange to the beholders’ (Moryson, Itinerary).; Chronicle of brewer Georg Siedler’s, 1597 [extract]; Skittles games in Thörishaus/Bern tavern; Bräker attends ‘eine comedie, marionetenspil’ on 6 February 1787 at the Adler in Lichtensteig [Diary extract]
Religious culture
Taverns set up along the way to a newly-emerging shrine at Niklashausen in 1471, in Strauss ed, Manifestations [extract]; Need for a tavern to allow faithful to attend distant parish church; Lauperswil, 1631, the sexton was cited for carrying ‘the table of our Lord Jesus Christ into the [Lion] inn, where a wedding party sat down around it to eat and drink’
Patrons
Types of Patrons
Tavern visitations conducted in the Principality of Lippe 1812 [extracts]; Complaints about clergymen attending and brawling in 15th century taverns in Strauss ed, Manifestations; Ordinance evidence for nobles/elites having separate meals and rules; Guest book with noble crests kept by the Wilder Mann inn at Basel; Excerpts from interrogation and supplications in the case of Nikolaus du Ponchau von Tournay, who claimed to be a Dutch noble and ran up large debts to an innkeeper’s widow; Pope stopping at Schwabhausen/Bavaria inn (cf. commemorative plaque, 1782); Bern holding state banquets at Falken inn; Petition from an innkeeper in the village of Oberhausen during the Thirty Years’ War (1632) complaining about the difficulties of living with the soldiers forcibly quartered in his public house [extract]; Augsburg poor law from 1543, which bans alms recipients from frequenting taverns and threatens to punish publicans who provide them with wine; Interrogation of Valentin Mair, a brewer accused of putting up a dishonorable guest; Interrogation of Augsburg brewer Hans Fischer, 1593, for putting up questionable guests [extract]; Felix Platter’s frightening experience at a remote Vaud tavern in 1552, when his party had to share accommodation with threatening peasants [Diary extract]; Interrogation of brewer Christoph Schmid and his guests Petrus Phocas from Constantinople, Hans Georg von Rabeneckh, and their servant interpreters [extracts]; Bern’s town gate registers of visitors and their accommodation [extracts]
Women and Gender Relations
Women in Public Houses
Women participating at dances and rites of passage; Interrogation of Anna Krug, accused of chronic drunkenness in 1541 [extracts]
Taverns and Sexuality
The case of Ursula Schreiberin and Zacharias Prenner, arrested on suspicion of fornication in 1592 for drinking together in a public house [extracts]; Interrogation of innkeeper’s wife Barbara Weberin, arrested in 1594 for allowing a married man to drink with a woman who was not his wife; Execution of a landlady charged with being a whore and procuress and for committing lewd acts on patrons (Nuremberg, records of executioner Franz Schmidt, c1600); Neuenegg/Bern women encouraging man to show his private parts; Description of ‘easy’ gender mix at the spas of Baden in 1611 (Coryate, Crudities); ‘Peep shows’ in rural Bernese inn (1663); At the inn of Kalchmatten (Emmental) in 1751, Elsbeth Güntlisberger from a nearby village publicly displayed herself naked ‘on the bed in the large lounge’, while Ranflüh’s publican offered a teenage girl money for showing guests whether she was already ‘fully developed’
Taverns and Households
Interrogation of the Augsburg gunsmith Otmar Peter in 1591, who threatened his wife with a knife when she tried to curtail his tavern visits [extract]; Petition from the wife of Jacob Ritter, dyer, who paid to have her husband locked in a tower in 1591 for poor householding;Petition and counter-petition in the case of potmaker Hans Mair and his wife from 1592, both of whom provide lists of expenses to support their competing views of his pub-crawling; Interrogation of Niclaus Spix, furrier, in 1588 for poor householding and breaking a ban on visiting taverns; Spix’s wife’s petition outlining his bad behavior and drinking habits, and illuminating the economic concerns of the household [extract]; Oath taken by disorderly householders in Augsburg during the seventeenth century, in which they had to swear to stay out of public houses for one year, during which time they also promised to avoid social drinking generally, to stay our of gambling bouts, and to carry no weapon; Neuenegg, 1659, minister and elders decided ‘to ban [a man called] Lieni from public houses, ... as repeated warnings had passed in vain ... and as he keeps wasting money at the inn, to the great detriment of his household’; Example of public house ban in manor of Worb/Bern
Sociability and Rituals
Toasting and Drinking Healths
Interrogations concerning a fight at an Augsburg wedding, 1593, [extracts]
Business and Contract Drinks
Description of a fight in an Augsburg tavern in 1510 over the refusal of two journeyman furriers to drink with master furrier Leonhard Wierich from Ulm; Supplication from loden weaver Hans Seidler, who was temporarily expelled from his craft for drinking with a member of a dishonorable profession during the 1550s; Interrogation of the Augsburg clockmaker Heinrich Frey in 1593, who refused to take an oath to stay out of taverns because, he insisted, he needed to drink contract drinks in public houses in order to conduct his business [extract]; Interrogation of Michael Hurler, who was drawn into a fight for refusing to drink with a colleague; Interrogation of a journeyman tailor who describes another craftsman’s act of slipping out of an inn without paying the tab in 1593 as dishonoring to his entire craft; Neuenegg villagers argue that they need to go to inn to find customers and settle bills
Reconciliation and Settlement
Description of the drinking of a settlement in the case of Elias Mair, 1590, who settled a fight with drinks in the presence of a publican; Interrogations of a group of alms recipients who drank as witnesses to a fight settlement in 1590, in violation of laws against alms recipients drinking in taverns [extracts]
Punitive Drinking
Descriptions by peasants in the village of Gebsattel
Violence and Disorder
Interrogation of the messenger Conrad Melder in 1594, who swore on a glass of wine that he would kill an adversary who had insulted him; Interrogation and supplications in the 1643 case of Christian Weber, a journeyman clockmaker who got into a fight with a brewer after repeatedly ringing the bell at the brewery late at night and insisting on being served beer [extracts]; Evidence for blasphemy; The case of Balthus Laimer, Augsburg weaver, 1548 [extracts]; Interrogation and statements in the case of Lucas Speler, who stabbed the landlord of the upper-class inn in which he was staying in 1591 after the innkeeper became insistent that he pay his 240-gulden tab; Interrogations in the case of Georg Engelhart and Matheis Bosch in 1593 [extracts]; The case of an Augsburg saddle-maker and a tailor who engaged in a tavern brawl with a brewer and a journeyman mason in 1594 [extracts]; Interrogation of a brewer who was involved in a fight in the butcher’s craft hostel in 1594
Politics and the Public Sphere
Associations and Societies Meeting in Public Houses
Entry from the brewer Georg Siedler’s chronicle, in which he describes the rituals of the comb-maker’s craft for which he served as “Hostel Father” (providing space, food, and drinks for their meetings); Some examples of learned/Enlightenment societies
Political and Religious Debate
Examples of religious discussion from Scribner, ‘Oral communication’; Priest dressing up as peasant to debate doctrine from Blickle, ‘Memmingen’; Verses recited by the character of a ‘prior’ in a pre-Reformation carnival play, from Niklaus Manuel, ‘Vom Papst und seiner Priesterschaft’; A witness statement describing a religious dispute that began in a country inn outside of Nördlingen in 1611; Travel reports evidence for discussion of current events in public houses
Local Government
Holding of village assembly/court sessions in Bavarian/Bernese inns; Publicans as town councilors: picture of Dachau town accounts, signed by several publicans, 1630s; Electioneering in early modern inns (Toggenburg, Bernese Oberland)
Riot and Rebellion
Bundschuh risings around 1500, from J Rott, Documents inédits sur le ‘Bundschuh’ et la guerre des paysans en Alsace; German Peasants’ War 1525 from Salzburger Empörerordnung, 1526; Swiss Peasants’ War 1653; Bavarian rising 1705

Volume 4: America

Structure and Material Life
Long’s Ordinary, Charlestown, MA: Floor Plans from 1640s, 1680s, 1720s; Jacob Danckaerts’ View of New York, from Brooklyn, 1679–1680, Long Island Historical Society; Land Plat, by Joseph Manning, noting the arrangement of buildings, 1697, in Charles County, Maryland; Philadelphia City Archives: physical description of Samuel Carpenter’s coffeehouse, the first such establishment in Philadelphia; Man Full of Trouble Tavern, Philadelphia: Photograph of Exterior; Floor-plan of Interior; John Fanning Watson, “William Bradford’s Old London Coffeehouse”, Annuals of Philadelphia (1830); Old London Coffeehouse, photograph (1854); John William Wallace, “Coffee-House Meeting Rooms”, An Old Philadelphian, Colonel William Bradford (1884) [extract]; Mrs Spilsbury, Engraving of Tavern Exteriors, in Dry Harbour and Elsewhere, Jamaica, 1769; City Tavern, plat, Historical Society of Pennsylvania?: detailed sketches of the building exterior and interior; Paintings and Engravings of Exterior and Floor Plans of Interior of The Tontine Coffee House, New York, 1780s–1810s; Plantation Maps showing Plantation Taverns : Paul Thilman’s Hanover County plantation, William Allen’s James City County plantation, John Miller’s Essex County plantation, and Edmund Taylor’s Hanover County plantation; Matthew Carey, The Merry-Fellows Companion (1797) [extract]; John B Linn and William H Egle (eds), “Minutes of the Board of Property of the Province of Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Archives (1879–1890) [extracts]; “Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania: From the Organization to the Termination of Proprietary Government,” in Samuel Hazard (ed), Colonial Records of Pennsylvania (1852–1853); List of the foods and beverages available for sale at The Merchant’s Coffee House and Exchange, Pennsylvania Gazette, Aug. 4, 1796; “Return of Beds,” Samuel Hazard (ed), Colonial Records of Pennsylvania (1852–1853); Probate Inventories of Philadelphia tavern-keepers who died while keeping taverns: Pennypot (1711), Three Tuns (1769) and Rainbow (1815); Probate Inventories of Boston tavern-keepers: Crown (1718) and Major King’s (1805); Probate Inventories for tavern-keepers of Kingston: Feathers (1686) and Punch Bowl (1807)
Economic, Commercial and Business Functions
James West and Gregory Marlow, Account Book: ledger kept by proprietors of the Pennypot tavern, 1690s; Joseph Ogden, Innkeeper’s Account Book, 1769–1771: keeper of the One Tun Tavern, shows increasing social stratification among public house clientele; Joseph Shewbart, Tavernkeeper and Coffeehouse proprietor, Account Book, 1740s; King George Inn Account Book; Thomas Allen Daybooks and Bills, 1772 & 1785, London (later City) Coffee House and Tavern, New London, CT; Thomas Allen Marine Lists, hand-drawn and printed in the Connecticut Gazette, 1770–1775; Newspaper advertisements (diverse notices in The American Weekly Mercury and Pennsylvania Gazette, 1720s–1770s); Claypoole’s Advertiser, June 24, 1797: call from Samuel Richardet, manager of the Merchant’s Coffee House and Exchange, to the city’s merchants, traders, and ship captains, to post bills of exchange and contribute to the tavern’s business directory; Broadsides, leaflets and advertisements, describing the various enterprisers renting space inside Boston taverns and public houses and offering their services to the public, 1790s–1810s
Political, Social and Cultural Functions
Communications
Published Marine Lists, produced by tavern-keepers, for Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, 1750–1815; Newspaper Advertisements of Postal Collection and Distribution services, and of Stage-Coach services, based at taverns, in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, 1750–1815; Newspaper Announcements describing lecture series and public rallies held at public houses, in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston, 1750–1815
Auctions
Newspapers and broadsides (in the Pennsylvania Gazette and American Weekly Mercury, 1730s–1770s): chart the dispensation of goods – from indentured servant contracts, slaves, estate sales, privateer bounty actions, to sheriff’s confiscations of property and goods for debt – through public houses
Special Events
American Mercury Weekly, March 1737: Owen Owen, keeper of the Indian King Tavern, posted an advertisement for a “living monster” supposedly born by a cat in the public jail, on display at the tavern; Pennsylvania Gazette, April 26, 1775: advertisement for Robert Mullen’s private tavern outside the city of Philadelphia in Manyunk; Printed Order of Events, for the New York Tammany Society meetings, 1790s onwards
Social Gatherings
Paintings and Engravings of Drinkers in Tavern Public Rooms and Private Rooms Upstairs: Svinin, Jones, Nixon, and Krimmel; Alexander Hamilton’s sketches of the drinking at the Annapolis Tuesday Club
Political and Judicial Activity
Non-Importation Resolution, 1765; Committee of Observation, Minutes of the Meetings at the Coffee House, December 1774 [extracts] ; “Examination of Isaac Atwood, July 11, 1776,” in Linn and Egle (eds) Pennsylvania Archives; “Minutes of a Meeting at the Indian Queen, Nov. 25, 1776,” in Hazard (ed), Pennsylvania Archives; Account of John Hughes, Philadelphia Tax Collector, Pennsylvania Journal, Sept. 4, 1765; Christopher Marshall, Passages from the Remembrances of Christopher Marshall, Member of the Committee of Observation and Inspection, of the Provincial Conference, And of the Council of Safety, ed William Duane (1837) [extract]; Rev Samuel Adams, tavernkeeper, Diary of a Salem (MA) tavern, 1780s, with detailed descriptions of meetings of Salem justices and juries; Engraving of the Court at Dover, New Hampshire, 1807
Proprietors, Employees, Clientele
Owners/Proprietors
License Lists, granted by Selectmen or County Court, 1700–1800: Boston, Philadelphia, and Kingston; Mayor’s Court Docket, 1767–1771, Historical Society of Pennsylvania [extracts]; Petitions for Tavern Licenses, Society Miscellaneous Collections [extracts]; Newspaper advertisements (American Weekly Mercury, Feb 12, 1740, Nov 13, 1740, Nov 20, 1740, Dec 25, 1740 and the Pennsylvania Gazette, March 26, 1761 and June 7, 1750); Richard Peters, Papers, 1704–1776 [extracts]
Employees
Philadelphia’s Harp & Crown expenses, 1740s; Tax Listings, Philadelphia, 1796; Runaway Slave Advertisement, American Weekly Mercury, Sept. 19, 1734; “London Coffee House Interior,” (1654); Ned Ward, “The CoffeeHous Mob,” frontispiece to Part IV of Vulgus Britannicus, or the British Hudibras (London, 1710)
Clientele
Sarah Kemble Knight, Journal, describing stays in taverns from Boston to New York, 1710s; Alexander Hamilton, Itinerarium, 1740s, describing the same, from Annapolis to Boston; Shewbart Tavern, Philadelphia, Account Book, listing customers, 1740s; Matthew Patten, Diary, 1740s, New London, CT; Accountbooks of North Carolina tavern, with separate books for black and white patrons, 1740s; London Coffee House, New London, Daybook, listing customers, 1770s; Raleigh Tavern, Williamsburg, Accounts and Bills for Individual Drinkers, 1770s; “City Tavern Declaration of Trust,” dated Feb. 9, 1776; Guardians of the Poor, Alms House Daily Occurrences Docket, 1787–1890 [extracts]; Lady Maria Nugent, A Journal of a voyage to, and resident in, the island of Jamaica, from 1801 to 1805, and of subsequent events in England from 1805 to 1811 (1907) [extracts]; Jonathan Troop, Journal, 1789–91 [extracts]; “A Grand Jamaica ball! Or the Creolean hop a la muftee,” print by William Holland after a drawing by A James; Paintings and Engravings of Patrons: Greenwood; Krimmel
Rural Taverns
Maps of Forts Detroit and Dearborn, 1760, 1810, showing the relation between frontier forts, taverns and shops; Engraving of Bashengo Tavern, near York, Pennsylvania, 1788; Engraving of Germantown Tavern, 1790s; Smith Tavern, Rehoboth, MA, Accountbook, 1710s; King George Hotel, Schaefferstown, PA, Accountbook, 1765–1775; M G Lewis, Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, 1815–17 (1929)
Legal Controls and Extra-Legal Activities
Regulations
Colonial Laws on taverns and tavernkeepers: Massachusetts Bay, Virginia, and Jamaica; “Laws and Orders for the Keepers and Frequenters of Ordinaries,” Philadelphia, PA (1683); Case of Hannah Gooding, March 3, 1686, Philadelphia Court Records Taken by Patrick Robinson, 1685–1686; Case of Widow Jane Dryver, March 1686, Philadelphia Court Records Taken by Patrick Robinson, 1685–1686; “Presentments of the Grant Inquest”, Philadelphia Court Records Taken by Patrick Robinson, 1685–1686; Philadelphia County Court of Quarter Sessions Docket, 1695 [extracts]; Case of Timothy Metcalf, Provincial Council, March 28, 1683; Special Magistrate John Anderson, A Magistrate’s Recollection, or St. Vincent in 1836 [extracts]
Prostitution/Brothels
Court cases prosecuting tavernkeepers keeping of bawdy houses, 1730s: Philadelphia Court; Boston Suffolk County Court; George Pinckard, Notes on the West Indies (1806) [extracts]; Thomas Rolandson, “Rachel Pringle of Barbados,” engraving (1796)
Gambling
Engravings of Gambling in a Tavern: 1760s, 1810s; Newspaper Diatribes against gambling in taverns: 1730s, 1780s, Pennsylvania Gazette; “Characteristic Traits of the Creolian and African Negroes in Jamaica” Columbian Magazine, or Monthly Miscellany (1797) [extracts]
Specialization and Decline

Volume 5: England

Grids of Order: Regulation
1550 byelaw banning public drinking after nine o’clock; 1552 act stipulating the licensing of alehouses; 1553 act licensing taverns and limiting their number; ‘A Condition for Alehouse-keepers and Tipplers’ (1570); 1581 byelaw prohibiting ‘night-walking’ by visitors lodged in alehouses and inns; 1590 byelaw stipulating that churchwardens search inns, taverns and alehouses ‘in time of divine service’; leet jurors’ complaints about the ‘intolerable number of tipplers’ in Southampton (1601, 1602) and their list of ‘fit’ and ‘unfit’ tipplers with florid preamble (1603); Jacobean statutes against ‘inordinate tippling’ (1603) and ‘the odious and loathsome sin of drunkenness’ (1606); 1617 act granting Sir Giles Mompesson authority to license inns; Excerpts from court leet weights and measures presentments involving innholders, tavern-keepers and alehouse-keepers
Substantive Geographies: Locations, Premises & Material Cultures
1670 deposition in which itinerant butcher Charles West refers to five alehouses by their signboards; 1577 chandler’s contract detailing ‘stints’ of candles required by publicans; Court leet presentments of ‘encroaching’ public houses (signboards, chimneys, service buildings, hedgerows); 1651 suit involving ‘the decayed inn called The Crown’; 1706 lease of the Watergate Tower to innholder Thomas Cole; Post-mortem probate inventories taken for Southampton alehouse-keepers, taverners and innholders [examples from 1550–1700]
‘The People of the Inn’: Publicans, Servants & Patrons
Wills for innholders: John Sedgwick, Morgan Emmotts, Thomas Broker and Richard Vibert; 1581 Will of Richard Long, who lived in an inn, bequeathing jewellery and clothes to his ‘host and hostess’; 1645 deposition describing the ‘good estate’ of innholder Henry Henstridge; 1622 petition from wounded mariner Richard Harvey to open an alehouse; 1571 court leet order prohibiting two ‘personable young m[e]n’ from opening alehouses; 1593 examination in which innholder Leonard Mills describes his routine and movements; 1639 deposition in which alehouse-keeper Sybil Wall describes pursuing some sailors in a boat for the ‘reckoning’; 1631 examination in which ostler at The George William Mason describes his routine and movements; 1577 depositions relating to the attempted rape of tavern servant Margaret Smith; 1628 deposition describing an argument between a tapster and a customer over ‘the littleness of the pot’; 1670 depositions describing an assault on a tapster by a soldier; 1579 byelaw banning locally resident poor men, artificers and ‘handycraftsmen’ from attending public houses; 1633 citation of three taverners for entertaining servants and apprentices; 1586 examination describing an alehouse visit by three cobblers; 1586 examinations describing a pub crawl undertaken by a butcher, baker and brewer; 1584 examination in which an itinerant shoemaker describes his use of alehouses; 1629 depositions describing a build-up of mariners at John Wall’s Hythe alehouse; 1627 deposition in which soldier Henry Wheatley describes being billeted with a publican as well as a series of alehouse visits; Diary of local wool merchant Joseph de Lamotte describing the arrival of the Moroccan ambassador and his retinue at The Dolphin inn [ms] [extract]
The Victualling Triad: Drink, Food & Lodgings
1642 Bill detailing the recorder’s ‘charges’ at The Dolphin inn; 1667 Will of brewer William Knight describing his facilities as well as debts owed by specific town publicans; 1619 quarter sessions order banning townspeople from purchasing beer from alehouses ‘and repairing to the grate of the prison’; Assembly-issued ‘assizes of wines’ from 1629 and 1631; 1573 deposition in which ‘Lord Lawne’ and ‘Lord Sandes’ describe their consumption of several wine varieties at an inn; 1675 assembly order standardizing measures for ‘brandy and all other strongwaters’; 1628 depositions concerning an alehouse-keeper’s alleged receipt and sale of stolen Virginian tobacco; 1550 byelaw permitting local elites to ‘supp at taverns’ beyond the 9pm curfew; 1639 probate inventory for alehouse-keeper and town cook Edward Phillater; 1652 deposition describing a young couple’s consumption of ‘fresh pork’ and ‘penny simnels’ at an alehouse; 1593 examination in which a soldier confesses to the preparation and consumption of a stolen sheep at The Talbot alehouse; Ordinance from 1574 stipulating that tipplers provide lodgings for ‘footmen’ and place the town’s arms at their door; 1592 deposition in which a Hampshire gentleman describes his difficulties securing accommodation in a Southampton public house (‘the beds were all full with soldiers’) before eventually finding lodgings in an alehouse
Entertainments & News
1623 assembly ordinance banning the performance of plays in the guildhall and limiting travelling players and their ‘representations’ to ‘the inns’; 1590 leet jury complaints about ‘continual bowling’ in the gardens of suburban tippling houses; 1577 examination in which servant William Cheeseman confesses to playing dice and cards with other servants and apprentices at The Dolphin and The Crown inns; 1652 depositions relating to a tavern brawl over a biased game of ‘tables’; 1656 leet jury presentment of innholder William Turner at The Greyhound for tolerating ‘games and games out of doors’; 1602 deposition describing conveyance of letters to and from The George inn; 1578 deposition in which mariner and tavern customer Richard Bullings describes receiving and then settling his reckoning with a ‘book of libels’; 1593 depositions relating to an alehouse discussion of ‘the scriptures and other matters’; 1624 depositions relating to a libellous speech in Roger Morse’s alehouse; 1641 depositions describing a customer’s criticism of parliamentary subsidies in Dorothy Batson’s tavern
Trade & Local Revenue
Detailed 1631 depositions describing the arrival, loading and departure of carriers at The George inn; 1553 ordinance banning the storage and sale of imported linens in inns and alehouses; 1609 citation of Richard Singleton, innholder at The Star, for permitting the sale of goods between strangers; 1603 ordinance banning the sale of fish ‘at the inns and taverns in the town’; 1632 citation of alehouse-keeper Marie Woodyer ‘for selling crockery wares’; 1627 deposition in which a single woman describes selling stockings at The Grave Maurice alehouse; 1639 deposition in which a weaver describes selling stolen cloth at an inn and three alehouses; 1659 assembly orders for the creation of a town brewery for ‘the relief of the poor’; 1647 licence allowing town carpenter Alexander Ockleford to sell beer ‘in consideration of his lameness’; 1648 order permitting Ockleford to continue his alehouse after recovery so long as he ‘pay[s] weekly 18d towards the relief of the poor in the town’; Ten unique seventeenth-century orders commanding/describing the receipt of poor children/orphans by alehouse-keepers in exchange for toleration/licenses
‘In Company’: Sociability & Masculine Identity
1623 deposition in which upholsterer James Heely describes drinking and playing cards with his ‘company’ in a chamber of The George; 1593 deposition in which an apprentice describes ‘falling in company’ with two Flemings at the Watergate and ‘going a drinking’; 1609 assembly citation describing ‘fighting and quarrelling at Jourdain’s tavern’ by three French men; 1664 depositions and examinations relating to a clash between two groups of soldiers who had been drinking at two different alehouses; 1587 examination in which Peter Borey describes drinking in an alehouse with ‘his company of his ship’; 1654 deposition describing the ‘love’ between two male drinking companions; 1602 depositions and examinations describing pledging rituals between Dutch mariners in ‘a cellar near the custom house’; 1631 depositions relating to a brawl between husbandmen in an Isle of Wight alehouse over an allegation of cuckoldry; 1628 depositions describing a fight between mariners outside The Ship alehouse; 1628 depositions describing a swordfight between two soldiers in the courtyard of The Bear inn; 1578 depositions relating to a clash between a group of drinking servants and two watchmen; 1753 depositions describing a pub crawl of six mariners which resulted in a nocturnal rampage; 1759 depositions describing a rampage by a group of apprentices and servants after their departure from The Sun alehouse.
Female Drinking, Sex & Household
1575 deposition describing women drinking with their husbands at The White Horse inn; 1631 depositions describing a betrothal at The Star inn; 1590 deposition in which servant Prunella Cowell describes seeking work at The Three Mariners alehouse; 1586 depositions describing the insulting of a goldsmith’s wife who had been drinking publicly with three sailors; 1678 deposition describing the sexual assault of a singlewoman in The Dolphin inn; 1649 petition of Anne Gutheridge relating a serious physical assault in an alehouse; 1579 leet jury complaint about the deleterious effects of husbands’ drinking on ‘wives and children’ and their roster of ‘lewd and idle husbands frequenting alehouses’ from 1615; 1579 deposition describing Katherine Perman’s attempt to retrieve her drunken husband from a Cosham alehouse; 1573 complaint about Lawrence Marshall, a ‘reporter to alehouses’ who ‘has almost killed his wife with beating of her’; 1569 deposition describing an adulterous couple’s activities in a stable of The Dolphin inn; 1602 depositions describing the suspicious conduct of ‘Gubbins of Heath’ and a married women at a fielden alehouse; 1654 depositions describing the activities of suspected adulterers in Thomas Loney’s alehouse; 1599 depositions describing prostitution in a loft at Thomasine Cotton’s alehouse; 1745 depositions describing the liaison between a prostitute and a soldier at The Roebuck alehouse
‘Receptacles for Malefactors’? Unsavoury Patrons & Crime
Leet jury complaints about The White Horse inn (‘a den of whores and thieves’) in 1576 and Peter Hendrick’s West Quay alehouse in 1602; 1664 deposition describing the stabbing of an innkeeper after a dispute over the ‘reckoning’; 1650 examinations and depositions relating to the serious sexual assault of a young women in George Pigeon’s unlicensed alehouse; 1593 examination in which an Andover locksmith describes using The George inn as his base for a series of thefts from town properties; 1586 examinations in which two shearmen confess to housebreaking after a day of heavy drinking in town alehouses; 1656 depositions and examinations describing the violent robbery of a tanner by his ‘pot companion’; 1624 deposition describing the theft of linens by a servant at The Dolphin inn; 1649 depositions relating to a theft from a sleeping guest at The Crown inn; 1602 deposition describing the attempted robbery of a gentleman in Gilbert Lambert’s alehouse; 1650 examinations and depositions relating to the theft of several horses by innkeeper Henry Henstridge

Related titles

• Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture
• Tea and the Tea-Table in Eighteenth-Century England

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