Not everyone was enthused with the massively growing popularity of coffee in England. A hilarious manifesto was published in 1674 entitled “The Women’s Petition Against Coffee”. The writers of this manifesto denounced this “newfangled, abominable, heathenish liquor called coffee”. With their “continual sipping of this pittiful drink”, they argued that it made English gentlemen intellectual and effeminate. It also turned them into idle gossips. “They sup muddy water,” the manifesto decried, “and murmur insignificant notes till half a dozen of them out-babble an equal number of us at gossipping.” On top of all this, the manifesto declared that coffee made their husbands impotent “as unfruitful as those deserts whence that unhappy berry is said to be brought.” A serious situation indeed!
But in The Men’s Answer to the Women’s Petition Against Coffee, the men claimed that the coffee houses were the Citizens Academy where they learnt and refined their wit. Case in point, they argued in the same document (tongue in cheek) that coffee made them better husbands by drying up the “crude flatulent humours” which made them fart in bed!
Read the full women’s manifesto here.
