Tom King's Coffee House

Tom King's Coffee House (later known as Moll King's Coffee House) was a notorious establishment in Covent Garden, London in the mid-18th century. Open from the time the taverns shut until dawn, it was ostensibly a coffee house, but in reality served as a meeting place for prostitutes and their customers. By refusing to provide beds, the Kings ensured that they never risked charges of brothel-keeping, but the venue was nevertheless a rowdy drinking den and a favourite target for the moral reformers of the day.

Tom King was born in 1694 to Thomas King, a squire from Thurlow, Essex, and Elizabeth Cordell, the daughter of Baronet Sir John Cordell. He was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge but was expelled (for reasons unknown) and eventually drifted to Covent Garden where he worked as a handyman, and met Moll in 1717. Moll, whose real name was Elizabeth Adkins, had been born in Vine Street in the slum district of St Giles in 1696; her father was a cobbler and her mother a fruit and vegetable seller in Covent Garden. She had gone into service at the age of fourteen, but found the work boring and so began hawking fruit and nuts around the Covent Garden area. Tom and Moll were married in 1717, but did not live together long. Tom began an affair, neglecting Moll, and when he eventually started to beat her, she left him and took up with a man named Murray (sometimes identified as William Murray, later Earl of Mansfield and Lord Chief Justice: this identification is erroneous, as William Murray was aged only 13 in 1718). However, Tom amassed some money from working as a waiter, and, around 1720, he and Moll reunited and opened a coffee house in one of the shacks in Covent Garden which they rented from the Duke of Bedford at the cost of £12 a year.

...
Wikipedia