Cornhill, is one of the oldest of the City news-rooms, and is frequented by merchants and captains connected with the commerce of China, India, and Australia.
"The subscription-room is well-furnished with files of the principal Canton, Hongkong, Macao, Penang, Singapore, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Sydney, Hobart Town, Launceston, Adelaide, and Port Phillip papers, and Prices Current: besides shipping lists and papers from the various intermediate stations or ports touched at, as St. Helena, the Cape of Good Hope, etc. The books of East India shipping include arrivals, departures, casualties, etc. The full business is between two and three o'clock, p.m. In 1845, John Tawell, the Slough murderer, was captured at [traced to] the Jerusalem, which he was in the habit of visiting, to ascertain information of the state of his property in Sydney."—The City, 2nd edit., 1848.
BAKER'S COFFEE-HOUSE,
Change-alley, is remembered as a tavern some forty years since. The landlord, after whom it is named, may possibly have been a descendant from "Baker," the master of Lloyd's Rooms. It has been, for many years, a chop-house, with direct service from the gridiron, and upon pewter; though on the first-floor, joint dinners are served: its post-prandial punch was formerly much drunk. In the lower room is a portrait of James, thirty-five years waiter here.
COFFEE-HOUSES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
Of Ward's Secret History of the Clubs of his time we have already given several specimens. Little is known of him personally. He was, probably, born in 1660, and early in life he visited the West Indies. Sometime before 1669, he kept a tavern and punch-house, next door to Gray's Inn, of which we shall speak hereafter. His works are now rarely to be met with. His doggrel secured him a place in the Dunciad, where not only his elevation to the pillory is mentioned, but the fact is also alluded to that his productions were extensively shipped to the Plantations or Colonies of those days,—
"Nor sail with Ward to ape-and-monkey climes,
Where vile mundungus trucks for viler rhymes,"