The Story Behind The Story#2

and The Spider's relation to coffee culture in Victorian Britain.

Dec 14, 2024

As we wrap up on The Spider I’m sharing some tidbits of research from writing the novel. This week, we’re looking at coffee culture in Britain and how coffee has been really important for the narrative of The Spider.

And Britons were really a nation of coffee lovers, not tea drinkers as popular myth has led us to believe. In 1840, Britain imported 28 million lbs of tea, compared with 70 million lbs of coffee.

By 1853 the trend had reversed as the plantations in India soaked the island in tea.

I was reading a copy of The Whistling by Rebecca Nettley last year and noticed that the late-Victorian governess was sitting down to drink coffee at the breakfast table. I thought, hmm, interesting, because although coffee has existed on the shelves of shops for as long as I can remember, there’s this stereotype in modern popular culture of tea having always been the main drink in Britain. I came across it again in The Woman In Black where Arthur Kipps is drinking some strong coffee after dinner. It got me thinking!

I’ll share some interesting things about coffee.

The first coffee house in Britain is said to have been opened by a Jewish entrepreneur named Jacob in Oxford, 1650. It is still there today: The Grand Café, 84 The High Street
OXFORD, OX1 4BG— Samuel Pepys actually wrote about it in his diary.
Coffee is believed to have been discovered in 9th century Ethiopia, when a farmer noticed how giddy his goats were after eating berries from a certain bush.
Coffee was a cultural staple of the Ottoman Empire and moved its way across Europe into the 18th century.
The coffee originally consumed in Britain was more like Turkish coffee is today.
Britain imported more coffee than tea in the 19th century until 1852, when tea imports overtook coffee. It was still coming in, but not in the same volume as before.
Coffee production was heavily intertwined with the slave trade, with the French empire losing its main coffee producer, Haiti, after the Haitian revolution in 1804. This made coffee more expensive and harder to come by. The abolition of slave labour in the British colonies in 1838 (over 30 years after the abolition of the slave trade) caused the European powers to focus on tea production instead, with the French, the Dutch and the British setting up tea production in India and Indo-China.
Coffee to this day is seen as a social drink, featuring as an after dinner drink in many Western cultures.
To this day, coffee and tea production is vulnerable to practices of modern slavery, and that’s why people look for coffee with the Fairtrade label, to ensure that producers are paid fairly.

What has coffee got to do with The Spider?

A bit, actually. The story isn’t about coffee, but some of my characters do drink it. The coffee house (as some pubs are still called today) was an important feature of the high street from the 1650s to today. At the time that The Spider is set, coffee won’t have been consumed as often as tea, but it was still a drink that wealthy people consumed in the morning, or after dinner. It was also a social drink, consumed by working class people when they visited coffee houses.

Frances Bryant practically needs it after her brief, unexplained illness. Coffee was well-known as both medicinal and as a stimulant by the 19th century, so Mrs Mckinnon, being the wise old lady that she is, brings her some after she’s had a stint of night terrors.

Coffee is quite significant when it comes to that delay for the reader. Stop, have a cup of coffee and ask no more questions:

Mrs Mckinnon bustled into the bedroom with a tray of breakfast items and coffee. “Good morning ma’am,” she said happily. “I can’t tell you how glad we are to see you up and about.” She laid the tray down on the side table and uncovered the plate of boiled eggs and ham. “Mr Bryant wasn’t sure what you’d like, so I’ve given you a bit of everything… and I can make you some beef tea to help you get your strength up, if none of this will do.” She poured out a small cup of coffee and walked over to Frances, holding it out like it was the elixir of life.

Frances took it gently and thanked her. “I’m sorry to have troubled everybody.”

“Ach, say no more of it. It’s our job to take good care of you.”

Coffee is also a narrative tool that I use to build up excitement for the investigation ahead. When Muldoon meets Mrs Mckinnon in the kitchen of number 5, Percy Street, she asks him if he’d like a cup of coffee. Muldoon didn’t even want to be there, never mind have a cup of coffee! He’s got work to do.

However, Violet Mckinnon is a lovely woman and as is still the norm to this day, it is almost impossible to say no to a cup of tea or coffee when you visit somebody’s house or place of work in the UK. Muldoon is no exception to this rule. The only people who say no to this offer are builders or workmen who have arrived already tanked up because they’ve been working back to back all day, and couldn’t even bring themselves to look at another cup. Also, some workers aren’t always near a toilet, so they say no sometimes. As for everyone else, you say yes, or you’re considered odd.

She had piqued Muldoon’s interest with the mention of a seance. “What happened next?” he asked, leaning back in the chair.

Violet Mckinnon was just about to speak when they were interrupted by the shrill scream of the kettle. The housekeeper jumped out of her skin and laughed slightly, placing her hand on her chest. “Things have been so tense. I’m rather jumpy. Just let me get the coffee on and we’ll talk some more, Inspector.”

He watched the housekeeper pour boiling water into the coffee pot and seal it with the blue glazed lid. Coffee-scented steam sailed out of the spout and into the cool morning air of the room, invading his nostrils and sharpening his senses. She brought it to the table and laid out the matching blue cups and sugar bowl. “You said no milk, was that right?”

As you can see, he just wants to know what happened! This part annoyed my husband because he, like Muldoon, was anxious to hear the next bit of the story. However, as coffee is a stimulant, it would be best for Muldoon to have a cup before embarking on this wild ride of an investigation. Wouldn’t you agree?

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Coffee houses and their significance

Originally, the coffee house was where gentlemen would meet to discuss politics, and they did it so often that King Charles II worried they would start plotting against the crown.

some thought this open sharing of news and political ideas was a threat to the monarchy. In 1675, King Charles II’s ministers attempted to suppress and close down coffeehouses on the grounds of their “evil and dangerous effects”. The king feared that coffee may provoke instigation or the plotting of violence against the throne and ordered the “close of coffee-houses altogether”, although he later withdrew the ban two days before it was to be put into effect,

Coffee houses started out as a place where important men could socialise and discuss ideas. They were referred to as ‘penny universities’ as people would get together and discuss all manner of things over a cheap cup of coffee. Later, in the 19th century, the coffee house was an important place for working class people to socialise that didn’t involve alcohol. There was concern from the local authorities that the working classes drank too much alcohol (in some places, it was cleaner than the water,) so coffee houses were welcomed. People could go there in their free time and listen to someone read the news from the papers. You see this in The Spider when the headlines are read out to the crowds in the coffee houses of Liverpool. It was important that they met there, as it would have been an important community hub.

The dramatic decline of coffee consumption in 19th-Century Britain happened just as coffee took off in North America, with Brazil’s rise as a crucial coffee producer on the backs of African slave labour. According to Hawley, in Britain “[coffee has] never fully recovered” to the pivotal place it held at its introduction in the 17th-Century British Isles.

Many people to this day have this stereotype of British people having high tea at 4pm, or only drinking tea. Coffee is very popular in the UK, and is experiencing a renaissance after its 20th century decline. Italian coffee chains are very popular here, as are cappuccinos and lattes.

Coffee may have been suppressed by the East India Company in the 19th century, but you couldn’t get coffee-drinking Britons to part with their preferred morning cuppa.

So if you see any British people drinking coffee in your next novel, you can rest assured that it has been in Britain since 1650.

Other news

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