Jonathan's Coffeehouse
Jonathan's Coffee-House in Change Alley [Exchange Alley] is
famous as the original site of the London Stock Exchange. The Coffee-House was
founded by Jonathan Miles, in Exchange Alley, around 1680. In 1696, several
patrons were implicated in a plot to assassinate William III, and it was
thought to be associated with the Popish Plots. It was the scene of a number of
critical events in the history of share trading, including the South Sea Bubble
and the panic of 1745.
Change Alley – Exchange Alley
Exchange Alley or Change Alley is a narrow alleyway
connecting shops and coffeehouses in an old neighborhood of the City of London
in England, bounded by Lombard Street, Cornhill and Birchin Lane. It served as
a convenient shortcut from the Royal Exchange to the Post Office. The coffee
houses of Exchange Alley, especially Jonathan's and Garraway's, became an early
venue for the lively trading of stocks and commodities. These activities were
the progenitor of the London Stock Exchange. Similarly, Edward Lloyd's coffee
house, at 16 Lombard Street, was the forerunner of Lloyd's of London.
A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss,
2000, Excerpts
“If its stock-jobbery you wish to discuss, I can think of no
better place than Jonathan’s Coffeehouse, the very heart and world of Change
Alley.” I then made my way to Jonathan’s Coffeehouse, where I was determined to
spend a few hours among the engineers of the London financial markets. If I was
to understand their intrigues, I reasoned, it was necessary I gain a better feel
for stock-jobbers. I took a seat at a table, called for a cup of coffee, and
began leafing through the papers of the day.
I listened to men shout at one another across the room,
debating the merits of this issue or that. Voices cried out to buy. Voices cried out to sell. I could hear
arguments conducted in every living language and at least one dead one. There
was something truly infectious about the exuberance of this place where
momentous events were always about to happen, a fortune was always about to be
made or lost. I had been in many a coffeehouse before where men argued about
writers or actresses or politics with unbridled vehemence. Here men argued
about their fortunes, and the results of their arguments produced wealth or
poverty, notoriety or infamy. The stock-jobber’s coffeehouse turned arguments
into wealth, words into power, and ideas into truth – or something that
strangely looked like truth. I felt myself to be in a strange and alien land
ruled not by the strong but by the cunning and the lucky.
Lloyd's
Atrium
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