LONDON TEA CARGO THAT MADE HISTORY

Evening Star, Issue 20982, 22 December 1931, Page 11

LONDON TEA CARGO THAT MADE HISTORY

Outside a shop in Creechurch lane, in the City of London, hangs a curious old sign, “ Tho Crown and Three Golden Sugar Loaves,” says Mr J. P. Jones, in the November ‘ P.L.A. Monthly.’ This sign marks the place of business of a firm which in 1773 sent 340 chests of tea in the ship Dartmouth to Boston, in British North America. ’This was part of tho cargo which was destroyed by the colonists on the occasion commonly known as “ Tho Boston Tea Party.” Inside tho building marked by “ The Crown and Three Golden Sugar Loaves ” are still to be seen “ ledgers going back a century and a-half, written in the copperplate writing of those days; there is, too, tho old counter over which the first pound of tea was sold in England. Another of their interesting relics is a list of tho slaves tho firm owned on their Rose Hall Estate in Jamaica in 1789, with notes on their condition, such as ‘ rheumatic,’ ‘ useless,’ ‘ bought very cheap,’ etc.”