Exchange Alley

Lombard Street and Change Alley had been the open-air meeting place of London's mercantile community before Thomas Gresham founded the Royal Exchange in 1565.

[4] In 1698, John Castaing began publishing the prices of stocks and commodities in Jonathan's Coffeehouse, providing the first evidence of systematic exchange of securities in London.

"The South Sea Bubble, a Scene in 'Change Alley in 1720'", Edward Matthew Ward's painting now in the Tate Gallery, skewers stock jobbers' opportunism and the foolishness of investors.

[citation needed] Contemporary songs and sarcastic decks of cards are described in Charles Mackay's Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

[6] Many lives were lost and the fire destroyed the London Assurance Office, the "Swan", "Fleece", "Three Tuns" and "George and Vulture" taverns, and "Tom's" the "Rainbow" "Garraway's," "Jonathan's" and the "Jerusalem" coffee-houses.