At the George and Vulture, Swift discussed the South Sea Bubble with his friends. Here, too, came Richard Estcourt, of Drury Lane, and founded the first Beefsteak Club. At a later period this coffee-house, on account of its sign, was especially popular with patriotic clubs. Amongst its patrons were Addison and Steele, whilst Daniel Defoe seems also to have been a visitor.
In Georgian days the old coffee-house became one of the most popular resorts of John Wilkes, and there also went Hogarth and other well-known men of the day, whilst members of the Hell-Fire Club were constant though unwelcome visitors.
In later times Charles Dickens immortalized the George and Vulture by making it an abode of Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller; the old hostelry was also selected by the great novelist as being the place where subpœnas were served on Mr. Pickwick’s friends in the famous case of Bardell and Pickwick. Dickens’s affection for “the George” is now perpetuated by the City Pickwick, a social club which holds its meetings there.
Dickens is supposed to have obtained the idea for the name of Tom Pinch from Dr. Pinche’s school, which in early Victorian days occupied the site of the Deutsche Bank, close to the George and Vulture, in George Yard. Sir Henry Irving was a pupil here, as was that still surviving legal luminary, Sir Edward Clarke.
Another resort full of old-world memories—the London Coffee-house, on Ludgate Hill, where John Leech’s father and grandfather were proprietors—occupied a Roman site. In 1800, behind this house, in a bastion of the City Wall, was found a sepulchral monument, dedicated to a faithful wife by her husband, a Roman soldier. Here also were found a fragment of a statue of Hercules and a female head. In front of the coffee-house, immediately west of St. Martin’s Church, stood Ludgate.
This coffee-house was within the rules of the Fleet Prison; and in the coffee-house were “locked up” for the night such juries from the Old Bailey Sessions as could not agree upon verdicts. In later days it became a tavern.
A curious incident once occurred in this house. Mr. Broadhurst, the famous tenor, by singing a high note caused a wineglass on the table to break, the bowl being separated from the stem. Brayley, the topographer, was present at the time.
Lloyd’s, now such a well-known institution, originated in a coffee-house of that name, which flourished as early as the very beginning of the eighteenth century.
Lloyd’s Coffee-house was originally in Lombard Street, at the corner of Abchurch Lane, subsequently in Pope’s-head Alley, where it was called “New Lloyd’s Coffee-house”; but on February 14, 1774, it was removed to the north-west corner of the Royal Exchange, where it remained until the destruction of that building by fire. When the Royal Exchange was rebuilt, special rooms were set aside for Lloyd’s, which assumed the form in which it flourishes to-day.
Lloyd’s, as a place for insuring ships, was at first started by an astute individual who saw the possibilities of a meeting-place for underwriters and insurers of ships’ cargoes.