Note 300 — Chapter XVIII · COFFEE-HOUSES AND TAVERNS.
Reading edition
No doubt, from the familiar abbreviations, such as Tom's, Ned's, Will's, John's, etc., some of the coffee-houses were kept by waiters who had saved a little money—such an one as 'Tom the Tyrant; who, as first Minister of the Coffee House, takes the Government upon him between the Hours of Eleven and Twelve at night, and gives his Orders in the most Arbitrary manner to the Servants below him as to the Disposition of Liquors, Coal and Cinders;'[300] while Kidney, the waiter at the St. James's Coffee House, immortalised in the Tatler as having 'the ear of the greatest politicians that come hither,' could not be spoken with 'without clean linen.'