Tom King's Coffee House - Tom and Moll King

Tom and Moll King

Tom King was born in 1694 to Thomas King, the squire in Thurlow, Essex, and Elizabeth Cordell, the daughter of the Baronet Sir John Cordell. He was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge but was sent down (for reasons unknown) and eventually drifted to Covent Garden where he worked as a handyman, and met Moll in 1717. Moll, whose real name was Mary and whose surname is unknown, had been born in Vine Street in the slum district of St Giles in 1696; her father was a cobbler and her mother a fruit and vegetable seller in Covent Garden. She had gone into service at the age of fourteen, but found the work boring and so began hawking fruit and nuts around the Covent Garden area. Tom and Moll were married in 1717, but did not live together long. Tom began an affair, neglecting Moll, and when he eventually started to beat her, she left him and took up with William Murray, who would later become the Earl of Mansfield and Lord Chief Justice. However, Tom amassed some money from working as a waiter, and, around 1720, he and Moll reunited and opened a coffee house in one of the shacks in Covent Garden which they rented from the Duke of Bedford at the cost of £12 a year.