Tom King's Coffee House

By refusing to provide beds, the Kings ensured that they never risked charges of brothel-keeping, but the venue was nevertheless a rowdy drinking den and a favourite target for the moral reformers of the day.

He was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge but was expelled (for reasons unknown) and eventually drifted to Covent Garden where he worked as a handyman, and met Moll (real name Elizabeth Adkins) in 1717.

However, Tom amassed some money from working as a waiter, and, around 1720, he and Moll reunited and opened a coffee house in one of the shacks in Covent Garden which they rented from the Duke of Bedford at the cost of £12 a year.

The shacks can be seen in many of the contemporary depictions of the piazza and features prominently in William Hogarth's Four Times of the Day (although it is rotated from its true position for the artistic effect of contrasting it with Inigo Jones' Church of St Paul).

Sir John Gonson, a fervent supporter of the Society for the Reformation of Manners and renowned raider of brothels, regularly sent informers to the coffee house to try and uncover some offence.

To counter this, Tom, Moll and their cronies developed their own secret language, Talking Flash, to render their discussions impenetrable to outsiders, and if they were discovered and charged, they bribed witnesses liberally.

The patronage of fashionable society continued though: on one occasion, even George II paid a visit, accompanied by his equerry Viscount Gage, but having been challenged to a fight for admiring the companion of one of his neighbours (who had not recognised him), he left immediately.

She suffered little from her stay in prison: her nephew William King took over the running of the coffee house and, by bribing the guards, Moll managed to enjoy many of the comforts of home.