Dolly’s Chop House
Dolly's Chop House "Among our many follies was calling in for steaks at Dolly's..." Thomas Jefferson Gentlemen's clubs had their origins in the coffee and chop houses spawned during Queen Anne's reign. Among these, few were as enduring and beloved as Dolly's. From humble beginnings it became an institution in Georgian London and survived into the Regency and beyond. As legend has it, Queen Anne gave the original premises, which had housed a tavern called Tarleton's, to her favorite cook Dorothy, or Dolly as she was known, a gesture acknowledged on a window of the coffee-room [...]
The Lowly Maid of All Work
Even the poorest gentry did not expect to do their own dirty work in the Regency era. If your annual income was £100-200 (approx. $9,000 - 18,000 spending power in today’s money), you could afford “help” in the person of a maid of all work.This luckless dogsbody would work 18 hours a day, seven days a week, for the price of her keep and wages of £8-12 ($720-1080) a year; perhaps a kind employer would grant her one or two days off each month. Even the impoverished Dashwood ladies in Jane Austen’s Sense [...]
Ices at Gunters
If you were a celebrity wedding planner in 1812, you might want your wedding ices made by Gunter's Tea Shop. A foodie destination from the mid 1700s, Gunter's made a range of ice creams and confectionery that would rock a dessert aficionado's world today let alone at a time when no one had fridges, or even electricity. The public must have found the idea of an ice cream sundae astonishing. Obviously such luxury did not come cheaply. Trade card for then Pot and Pineapple Known initially as The Pot and Pineapple, Gunter's was established [...]
