When coffee was banned: strategies of labour and leisure among Stockholm’s poor women, 1794–1796 and 1799–1802

Abstract

This article maps out the largely unknown history of poor women’s dealings with coffee in Stockholm during the coffee prohibitions of 1794–1796 and 1799–1802 drawing on the city’s extensive police records. A total of 536 cases have been identified that involved the illegal selling, preparation, and consumption of coffee. These cases are analysed in the context of the separate but intertwined research fields of the global underground, household work, and the consumption of new exotic goods in the early modern period. The results from the study reveal the complex networks that facilitated the trade in coffee beans and coffee beverages during the prohibition, and the multifaceted processes which promoted the status of coffee to a common consumer good. It also reveals the extent to which coffee brought labour opportunities and income to poor women, but also how, by the end of the eighteenth century, the consumption of coffee had gained new connotations associated with work and leisure.