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Sole Survivor

The Sole Survivor

The old "Society of Cogers" (pronounced "Koh-jers") is mentioned in encyclopedias and several histories of the City of London. Until the late 1960s the meetings were held on licensed premises in Salisbury Square. When this place was eventually closed down, the traditional debate was conducted in an informal manner at various pubs in the "Square Mile". The first meeting of the original "Society of Cogers" was convened in the upper room of a tavern in Bride Lane, Fleet Street, in 1755. This society was one of the many convivial debating clubs formed part of the social, intellectual and commercial life of London during the eighteenth century. Taverns and coffee-houses throughout the capital already functioned as important centres of trade and commerce and gave rise to Lloyds, the Baltic Exchange and the Stock Exchange. In this period Fleet Street was the natural home of publishers and lawyers and by the reign of George the Second as least a dozen clubs had been established for the purpose of reviewing and discussing the contents of newspapers. The Society of Cogers is the only one of these to have survived. It can now claim to be the oldest "free-speech forum" in the world.