Moll King's Coffee House
On Tom's death the coffee house became known as Moll King's Coffee House, but business continued much as before. Moll, however, took to drinking and became more quarrelsome, and the reputation of the shacks for bad behaviour and violence worsened. Moll would also occasionally fleece inebriated patrons by littering their tables with broken crockery and then presenting them a bill for the damages, confident that they were too drunk to realise that they were being taken advantage of. The patronage of fashionable society continued though: on one occasion even George II paid a visit, accompanied by his equerry Viscount Gage, but having been challenged to a fight for admiring the companion of one of his neighbours (who had not recognised him) he left immediately. Eventually, in June 1739, a riot erupted in the Long Room and spilled out in the piazza. Moll was charged, found guilty, and fined £200, sentenced to three months in prison and required to find sureties for her good behaviour for three years after her release. Moll refused to pay the fine on the grounds that it was both excessive and unwarranted and managed to get it reduced to £50. She suffered little from her stay in prison: her nephew William King took over the running of the coffee house and by bribing the guards Moll managed to get many of the comforts of home. She continued to run the coffee house until around 1745, when she retired to live in her villa at Haverstock Hill. She died on 17 September 1747, leaving a large fortune.
Read more about this topic: Tom King's Coffee House
Famous quotes containing the words moll, king, coffee and/or house:
“Duns at his lordship’s gate began to meet;
And brickdust Moll had screamed through half the street.
The turnkey now his flock returning sees,
Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees:
The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands,
And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“Cities are ... distinguished by the catastrophic forms they presuppose and which are a vital part of their essential charm. New York is King Kong, or the blackout, or vertical bombardment: Towering Inferno. Los Angeles is the horizontal fault, California breaking off and sliding into the Pacific: Earthquake.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“you who put gum in my coffee cup
and worms in my Jell-O, you who let me pretend
you were daddy of the poets, witchman, you stand
for all, for all the bad dead, a Salvation Army Band
who plays for no one. I am cement. The bird in me is blind
as I knife out your name and all your dead kind.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.””
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 1:30-33.