People in the eighteenth century did much of their drinking in public. At a time when most lived in dwellings that were small, cramped, and poorly heated in the winter, taverns, wineshops, and cafés offered a warm fire and refuge from crowded and uncomfortable quarters. But taverns and coffeehouses were more than simply an escape from the discomforts of home. People frequented taverns and coffeehouses to find jobs, conduct business, exchange information, or celebrate important events of their lives. These were places where baptisms and marriages were celebrated, newspapers circulated, stock traded, crimes plotted, votes solicited, ministers attacked, laborers employed, wars debated, freemasons initiated.

Taverns and coffeehouses were in principle public space, open to anyone who could pay for their drink. This side of taverns continues to find expression in the British term “pub” (after public house), which entered common usage in the eighteenth century. The openness and accessibility associated with public-drinking establishments date back to the Middle Ages, when local statutes or custom sometimes prescribed sanctions against tavern keepers who refused to serve a patron without good cause. Such provisions were rooted in medieval traditions of hospitality, which under specific conditions obliged communities and lordships to offer food, drink, or accommodations to travelers and pilgrims. The publicness of drinking establishments in early modern Europe found expression in the often picturesque signs that beckoned those on the street to come within.