English people over forty may know what an A.B.C. tea shop is, but younger folk and Americans may not, especially as A.B.C. has been out of business since the 1980s. These tea shops show up in several of Agatha Christie’s stories, however, so let’s take a closer look.
A.B.C. stands for Aerated Bread Company, which was a bakery founded in 1862 by Dr. John Dauglish. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Dr. Dauglish studied medicine in Edinburgh, but he was also a bit of a mechanical inventor.
Using his knowledge of chemistry, Dauglish perfected a method for making bread dough rise by directly incorporating carbon dioxide into the batter, rather than waiting for yeast to ferment. He also designed machinery for cleaner, more efficient production on a large scale. Bread-making went from eight hours to half an hour, and workers no longer kneaded dough with their feet!
The first bakery was opened in Islington, just north of London, but soon more popped up. At one of the bakeries, the manager often served tea to her favorite customers and suggested to the board of directors that tea might be a smart revenue stream. The first tea shops opened in 1864 and soon appeared all over London, particularly near railway stations.
Early on, A.B.C.s offered tea and lemonade, sandwiches, and a variety of buns, cakes, and pastries, but during the shops’ heyday in the 1920s, the menu expanded considerably. Tuppence orders a plate of tongue when she and Tommy lunch there in “The Sunningdale Mystery,” and Tommy asks for a chop and fried potatoes, although Tuppence insists that a cheesecake and a glass of milk is more fitting to the “Old Man in the Corner” persona he’s trying.
These tea shops were appreciated by clerks and shop assistants as a low-key place to buy an inexpensive lunch, but in the late 1800s, the most appealing feature of A.B.C.s was that they were a socially acceptable dining option for women without a male escort.
Particularly for women of a certain status, pubs and restaurants were off-limits, and they either entertained at home or were guests in a friend’s home. These genteel tea shops offered women a place to congregate, make new acquaintances, and converse without men present. A.B.C.s became instrumental in furthering the women’s rights movement by providing a space for women to gather, talk, and plan.
Tuppence and Tommy have lunch in an A.B.C. tea shop in Partners in Crime, and Tommy treats himself to breakfast in The Secret Adversary. A wooing couple also meets for tea and buns at an A.B.C. shop in the short story “The Lonely God.” It’s no wonder the shops show up in Christie’s novels since they were common to her readers. In 1923, there were 250 tea shops and 150 branch shops in London, although by then the Lyons tea shops were competing.
Unfortunately, Dr. Dauglish did not live to see the success of the tea shops as he became ill and died in 1866, just four years after the first bakery opened. He sounds like an interesting man, and possibly on the spectrum, according to his biographer.
William Jerome Harrison wrote: “John Dauglish went to Dr. Alexander Allen's school at Hackney, but it was found necessary to allow him to study alone,” and “The next four years were spent in the medical schools of the university there, his boyish difficulties still confronting him.” One can only wonder what else Dauglish might have done with better support.
In case you were wondering, one of Christie’s novels is called The A.B.C. Murders, but it has nothing to do with the tea shops. That A.B.C. refers to a railway guide which is left at each murder scene.
Early railways all had their own schedules and their own guides. George Bradshaw compiled all the schedules into one volume known as Bradshaw’s Guide. The ABC Railway Guide improved on Bradshaw’s by alphabetizing the information.
Tea shops started going out of fashion in favor of fast-food places by the middle of the 1900s. The Aerated Bread Company was bought by Allied Bakeries and continued to bake bread for a while, but that also ended in 1982. Maybe it’s a good thing that Agatha Christie mentioned them in her novels so we can look back and relive the A.B.C. tea shop glory days.