Colonial Philadelphians, like other Americans of the time, regarded habitual drinking as sinful but the moderate consumption of beer, cider, rum, and wine as healthful and unremarkable.¹ Of course, definitions of “moderate” consumption varied. Ministers, magistrates, and moralists regarded some forms of drinking, and some varieties of drink, as pernicious. Nevertheless, among the population at large, alcohol was held in great affection and attitudes toward drunkenness were indulgent. “Top’d,” “tann’d,” and “tipium grove,” “buskey,” “bowz’d,” and “burdock’d”: these are a sample of some one hundred fifty synonyms for inebriation employed in colonial Philadelphia.² As a song had it:

There’s but...

As he considered the place of taverns in the development of his colony, William Penn was ever mindful of the biblical injunction “righteousness exalts a nation but sin is the shame of any people.”¹ In an early draft of Pennsylvania’s “Fundamental Constitutions,” Penn reasoned that “virtue and industry” could be nurtured only if the “letts to both are . . . removed” and went on to assert that no taverns or alehouses would be “endured” in Pennsylvania. Yet Penn hoped that the holy experiment to be conducted on the banks of the Delaware would encourage men to remake themselves. He...

The men and women who conducted Philadelphia’s tavern trade came from various backgrounds, and each brought different resources to the trade. Some licensees had previous business experience, whereas others had none. Some publicans were cushioned by personal wealth from the ruinous consequences of business mistakes, while others were vulnerable to the slightest constriction in their cash flow. Most licensees rented the house in which they kept tavern,but a few publicans owned their public house. Some licensed premises were so small that the designation public “house” seems charitable; others were among the largest buildings in the city. Not all tavernkeepers were...

From the founding of Philadelphia until the eve of the Revolution, diverse clienteles shared the city’s public houses. During this period, rich male citizens, the city’s aspiring patriciate and current judicature, used taverns. Their minions and personal secretaries—the men whose world Jacob Hiltz-heimer recorded in his diary—also frequented taverns. Timeserving clerks, master craftsmen, artisans, laborers, and occasionally their wives and sweethearts visited taverns. They were joined by the sort of people eighteenth-century magistrates would have labeled “rogues” or “vagabonds.” Philadelphia’s elite, fearful of the licentiousness and immorality of the “lower orders,” attempted to regulate the mixed company that...

In 1689 William Penn wrote to the provincial council of his fledging colony asking, “Whatever you do, I desire, beseech and charge you to avoid factions and parties, whisperings and reportings and all animosities, that putting your shoulder to ye public work, you may have the reward of good men and patriots.”¹ He was too late. Almost from the moment the first Philadelphians stepped ashore, the city of brotherly love was embroiled in bitter factional disputes. These were reflected in, and to some degree prompted by, tavern talk. In 1683, for example, Nicholas More, president of the Free Society of...

In the final third of the eighteenth century, Philadelphians of all ranks and backgrounds grew disillusioned with the mixed company previously typical of their city’s taverns. Although taverngoing retained its popularity, and although Philadelphians continued to discern and contest social and political meaning in public speech and action, taverngoers expressed through their custom an increasing preference for sociability among men of similar background and opinion. At the same time, sections of the taverngoing public demanded the more efficient provision of specific services. The city’s tavernkeepers attempted to respond to both of these developments.

Travelers’ demands for ever safer and more...

On July 15, 1782, the chevalier de la Luzerne, France’s minister to America, staged a grand fete at his Philadelphia residence. The event celebrated the dauphin’s birthday and, more generally, Franco-American friendship on the eve of peace. The minister invited eleven hundred guests. Since no public house could accommodate such a crush, the chevalier transformed his official residence to entertain the invited dignitaries. He built a temporary roofed dancing area, forty by sixty feet square, on the embassy’s grounds. Benjamin Rush noted that “the garden contiguous to this shed was cut into beautiful walks, and divided with cedar and pine...