Macklin’s Coffeehouse

In 1753, Charles Macklin opened a luxuriously-appointed coffeehouse in the Piazza of Covent Garden in London. Macklin’s Coffeehouse was an innovative commercial enterprise that blended together several different kinds of sociable space, combining a coffeehouse, tavern, ordinary, and subscription room or club. Opened in March 1754, Macklin used the coffee-room in November and December 1754, as the location for twenty-three performances of ‘The British Inquisition’, which combined an oratorical lecture with a debating society. The most notorious innovation of the business was that it was open to women as well as men. Macklin’s enterprise is examined as a form of hybridised ‘polyhedonic sociability’: one that seeks to offer a range of sociable pleasures that are more usually contra-indicated or in tension, primarily marked by differential aspects of politeness, gender, and social space. Initially popular, Macklin’s enterprise was overcome by debt, and he was forced into bankruptcy in January 1755.