Pasqua Rosée
Pasqua Rosée, opened the first coffee-house in London in 1652. The coffee-house was located in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill. Rosée had previously opened his first coffee shop in Oxford, England in 1651. Rosée's origin is not clear, however he probably was born to a Greek community of the Republic of Ragusa and moved to Smyrna, Ottoman Empire (modern-day Izmir, Turkey in Asia Minor 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 employed him  as a manservant and brought him back to Britain. Once there, Rosée set up the establishment, its sign a portrait of Rosée. However, local publicans in the highly regulated alehouse trade accused him of being an interloper, although it is unclear how successful this claim was. Nevertheless as he was not a freeman of the city of London he was debarred from any trade. However Daniel Edwards and his father-in-law, Alderman Thomas Hodges backed Hodges' apprentice, Christoper Bowman to become Rosée's business partner when he completed his apprenticeship and became freeman of the city of London on  22 February 1654. The partners moved the business into premises in nearby St Michael's Alley. Jamaica Wine House now reputedly occupies the same space. Later, Pascal Rosée moved to Paris, where he opened the first Parisian coffee shop on the Place Saint-Germain in 1672.