Interior of a Coffee Shop

Six male customers are portrayed having a meal in a minimalistic coffee shop. On the far left a man clutches his knife and fork while the man opposite him licks his plate clean. A waiter on the far right, shown in profile and wearing an apron, is in the process of taking an order. The slogan 'Good pull up for carmen' was usually displayed outside cheap eating houses of this type to attract the trade of drivers of vans, lorries and other heavy vehicles. Eating houses with back-to-back seating were common in Victorian and Edwardian London.

William Stewart (1886-1967) painted this scene from sketches he made roughly fifty years earlier.