Researching the coffee roasting industry in 19th century London exposes the risks involved in what was often a family business – risks that could end in court, as Nell Darby reveals

Robert Gatenby, who was born in Ripon, Yorkshire in the first decade of the 19th century, would spend most of his life in the East End of London. His life, although on the surface rather ordinary, like many of our ancestors’, is worth some study for two main reasons. Firstly, the censuses merely graze the surface of his life, and it’s only by looking at other sources, such as court reports and bankruptcy notices, that we can build a fuller picture of what his work was like. Secondly, though, he found an industry in which he could make a long-term living – and one that he could train his children in, thus creating a multi-generational family of coffee roasters, in a nation that was becoming one of coffee lovers.

Bankruptcy
Robert was certainly living in London by 1834, when he married Marina Ann Rutter. At the end of this year, he appears to have been in East London, where he was declared bankrupt. He had been working as a grocer, and when his trade stock was sold off, it largely comprised teas, sugars, coffees, honey and spices, as well as all his household furniture. His wife, Marina, was originally from Portsmouth, and the couple moved back there after the bankruptcy; their eldest children were born here in 1837 and 1840. This may have been Robert’s attempt to make a new life for himself somewhere well away from his prior business failure. By 1841, though, the family had returned to East London, where Robert established himself as a chocolate maker in Stepney. However, by 1851, he had become a coffee roaster, and would work as such for the rest of his life. His sons grew up watching their father roast the coffee, and once each was old enough, they joined him in the family business.

The 19th century was a period of change in terms of coffee roasting. Early coffee roasting had used a special pan and stirring spoon, and took time, as only a small number of beans could be roasted at once. In the mid-17th century, the first cranked cylinder roaster started to be used, in Egypt, and was designed to be held over either a brazier or open fire. These roasters then became popular in England by the 18th century. However, in the 19th century, coffee was more popular, and professional coffee roasters proliferated in the first half of the century, aiming to batch roast the coffee beans for coffee sellers and grocers to sell to the public. Although home roasting was an option in Victorian England – beans could be bought from a shop or through mail order, and roasted in the oven or on a skillet – commercial roasting was able to take the mess and time involved in preparing the beans away from the family home, enabling people to buy their coffee ready roasted from their local shop.

Coffee consumption
The first large-scale coffee roaster in the United Kingdom had been patented back in 1824; the social investigator and journalist Henry Mayhew noted that even in the 1830s, selling tea and coffee in the streets was little known, and it was only in the early 1840s that coffee consumption increased, helped by a reduction in duty on it. By 1851, when Mayhew published his study into London life and work, there were four coffee stalls in Covent Garden alone, and the most popular stalls were not in ‘posh’ areas, but ones where working people were heading to their jobs – coffee being popular among the workers. These coffee stall keepers bought their coffee beans from a grocer, and would grind it themselves, mixing (or adulterating) it with chicory and burnt sugar to make it last. Mayhew stressed that coffee – usually costing around a penny a mug to the customer – was far more popular than tea, and ‘scarcely one stall in a hundred’ would sell the latter.

The coffee stall was the end of the coffee production process. Before that, there was the man who roasted the coffee, and then the man who sold it – the grocer. In 1852, the relationship between these two professions came under press scrutiny, when Robert Gatenby was prosecuted by a local grocer for theft. Gatenby operated under the name Gatenby & Co., operating from 6 Stepney Causeway. He had set up his business claiming to roast coffee using an ‘improved’ process that led to less waste. Gatenby had to promote his services locally, and so had visited grocer James Langtry, who was based at 9 Salmon Lane in Limehouse. He persuaded the grocer to do business with him – Langtry would take his coffee ‘berries’ to Gatenby to roast, then collect them and sell them on to his customers – and left him with his grand, engraved, business card. Langtry also agreed to sell Gatenby a small coffee roaster, and said that instead of having to pay for the roaster in cash, Gatenby could roast some coffee for him instead.

James Langtry was himself fairly new in business, having recently taken over Curry & Co., a well-established grocer’s shop. However, he had already come to distrust local coffee roasters, believing them to be quick to try and defraud their customers – it seems to have been common for some coffee roasters to substitute or adulterate good coffee with bad. Therefore, when asked to do business with Gatenby, he was cautious. He went to Stepney Causeway shortly after his meeting with the roaster, and said to him:

“As you profess to be such a coffee-roaster, and turn it out so much heavier than anyone else, I will send you the roaster and some coffee to roast, by my lad, the following morning.”

The following day, Langtry sent a roaster and a bag of the finest plantation coffee, weighing over 50 pounds, to Stepney Causeway. He then went there himself to see the coffee being roasted, and was disappointed to find that it was a very small business, although the roaster that Gatenby usually used was impressive. Gatenby roasted half the contents of the bag, and Mr Langtry was impressed with the roast; but he did not have time to stay to watch the second half of the bag being roasted. Instead, he left his 14-year-old son, James Jr, in the yard to wait for the roasted coffee. Langtry said that he had left his son to wait for the roasting precisely because he was used to roasters ‘playing tricks’ on him.

However, as soon as Langtry left, Gatenby allegedly pushed James Langtry by the shoulders into his kitchen, and told him to eat some plum pudding. Gatenby then left to roast the coffee, returning after a while, saying, ‘There’s your coffee, take it home.’ When Mr Langtry opened the bag, the ‘unpleasant’ smell immediately made him realise that this was not the superior coffee he had taken to the roastery. It looked as though some of his coffee had been put on the bottom, but topped up with a different type.

He complained to the roaster, but Gatenby retorted, ‘Pooh, pooh, there is no mistake.’ He later told Langtry that he was ‘a pretty fellow to make a fuss about nothing’. At the grocer’s shop, locals were asked to smell the coffee and said how bad it was; in response to them, Robert Gatenby swore, saying, ‘I am [damned] if you know what coffee is.’

Robert Gatenby duly appeared at the Old Bailey charged with simple larceny. His nine-year-old son, William Dixon Gatenby, was called as a witness for the defence – which must have been an intimidating experience for a young boy. Nevertheless, he insisted that James Langtry Jr had stayed with him in the yard the whole time the coffee was roasted. William was also present, and saw the coffee being roasted, and his father cooling it before patting it into a bag, tying it up and putting in on the grocer’s son’s back to carry. All that mattered to the jury, though, was that the coffee that had been taken to Gatenby & Co had smelled good, and the coffee that came out smelled bad. Robert Gatenby was found guilty of larceny and sent to prison for four months.

After prison
Perhaps surprisingly, Robert Gatenby resumed his profession on his release, still in the Stepney area. This was undoubtedly partly out of necessity, perhaps being unable to afford to uproot his family and start again somewhere else, but he had a decent reputation among his neighbours (some of whom had given evidence in his favour), and it could be that they were on his side rather than on Langtry’s. Gatenby therefore continued to roast coffee, assisted by each son as they got old enough.

Robert, like many coffee roasters, roasted his coffee in his yard – the process could result in smoke and the blowing of detritus, and so an open space was preferable. Yet he worked in an increasingly built-up part of the city, and his work and its attendant smells would have made him a visible part of the community.

Coffee was not only in the Gatenby family’s blood – at least three generations of them would work as coffee roasters, in East London and beyond – but it was one of the smells of East London too. {