Pasqua Rosée

Who is Pasqua Rosée?

Pasqua Rosée opened the first coffeehouse in London in 1652. The coffeehouse was located in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill.

Rosée was probably born into the ethnic Greek community in Ragusa in Sicily in the early seventeenth century. In 1651 a merchant named Daniel Edwards, a member of the Levant Company and a trader in Turkish goods, encountered Rosée at Smyrna in Anatolia, employed him as a manservant and brought him back to Britain.

Once there, Rosée set up the establishment, its sign a portrait of Rosée. In 1654, to circumvent resistance from local alehouse traders, he accepted Christoper Bowman as a business partner because he was a freeman of the city of London. Bowman had been the coachman of Alderman Thomas Hodges, Edwards' father-in-law.

The Jamaica Wine House now reputedly occupies the same space.