The Wits of Widow Thoms’ Coffee-House

Abstract

In 1943, ‘Hibernicus’ submitted a Query: The Widow Thoms Coffee House. – These words with the date 4 Jan. 1745/6, are written in my copy of Capt. George Carleton’s Memoirs. Was it usual for such places to keep books? Stuck on the inside of the cover is a printed slip, “Case E, Shelf 7.”1 The same volume has a gay heraldic book-plate in gold and colours, of Dauntesey, Agecroft Hall. Who was this? Was the double date in use for long before the introduction of the new style in 1752?2 A short answer to which might be: yes, John Dauntesey of Peterhouse Cambridge (a few yards south of the coffee-house) and of Agecroft Hall near Manchester, and yes. Dauntsey arrived at Cambridge a decade after the book and may have obtained it legitimately if the stock of books was renewed. Widow Thoms’ Coffee-house was probably the ‘new Coffee house’ that the young fellow commoner, Spencer Penrice, visited with the Master of Pembroke Hall in February 1737.3 Susanna Thoms, its proprietor, was first licensed to sell brandy, as some coffee-house keepers were, in 1742.4 By the middle of the century, Thoms’, or erroneously Tom’s, had become a fashionable haunt of Cambridge’s student ‘lowngers’;5 a verse of 1851 detailing the habits of The Lownger included the lines: