It's daily #fannyfact time everyone! Sorry it's a bit late, our curator did some lunchtime exercise and had a "small snooze" afterward........ it was only 20 mins so we're not judging, right?

So... here is your daily dose of FANNY FUN!

In 1674, a "Women's Petition Against Coffee" was written up in England by a group of women who believed coffee made men too talkative and bad in bed.

Coffee houses became the "go to" places in the mid 17th century, with the first being opened in around the 1650s. By 1663 there were 82 coffeehouses in central London (so we've always pretty much been a city fuelled by caffeine!)

However, the rise in coffee lovers saw a lot of bite back - in a somewhat comedic pamphlet published in 1674, a group of women came out against the “newfangled, abominable, heathenish liquor called coffee.

Historians debate if the pamphlet was actually written by women and if they really did represented women's views on coffee, as Charles II tried to ban the establishments a year later citing them as places of political unrest

It's argued that the satirical pamphlets were created. in order to help make coffeehouses unpopular as they were perceived as sites of political unrest. *gasp* No one wanted 17th century men gathering together sober - who knows what would have happened?!

In the petition, the supposed wives of coffee-drinkers argued against the belief that coffee-drinking was "an intellectual pastime" and was in fact and "effeminate pastime" that it had made their husbands impotent

One woman supposedly wrote that coffee made her husband “as unfruitful as those deserts whence that unhappy berry is said to be brought.” (Coffee-growing land is generally very rich and fertile.)

To directly quote: "For can any woman of sense or spirit endure with patience, that when...she approaches the nuptial bed, expecting a man that ... should answer the vigour of her flames, she on the contrary should only meet a bedful of bones, and hug a meager useless corpse?"

They also argued that coffee made their husbands into mad gossips: "they sup muddy water, and murmur insignificant notes till half a dozen of them out-babble an equal number of us at gossipping" one wrote

Here is the cover of the actual pamphlet, and I am loving the embolden S E X

It is actually quite unlikely that women of the time were annoyed by coffee houses - they actually offered them a way into business that didn't involve 100% guarantee of drunken louts. Many of the coffee houses were also managed and staffed by women, bringing income.

Either way, the fact that anyone could be angry enough about bad sex to make a pamphlet about it, fake or not, we STAN !!