Cogers
the world's oldest debating society, established in the City of London in 1755
The Society of Cogers () is a free speech society, established in 1755 in the City of London. It is the oldest debating society in the world and one of the oldest speaking gatherings of any kind.
History and concept
The name "Cogers" comes from Descartes' famous assertion, Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). As a "Society of Thinkers", the Cogers is dedicated to the philosophy of letting everyone express their thoughts. The aims of the Cogers were the promotion of the liberty of the subject and the freedom of the Press, the maintenance of loyalty to the laws, the rights and claims of humanity and the practice of public and private virtue.
The first meeting in 1755 was at the White Bear Inn (now St Brides Tavern), Fleet Street. Meetings were held on Saturday evenings.
In around 1850 it moved to Discussion Hall, Shoe Lane, and in 1871 migrated to the Barley Mow Inn, Salisbury Square, E.C.1, where it remained until the 1960s. Attendances went into decline during the 1970s and 80s. By the mid-90s, the original society had split into two rival factions.
The public source identifies “Cogers” as the world's oldest debating society, established in the City of London in 1755. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Cogers, world's and oldest.
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 19, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q5141099. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1755, 1850 and 1871.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cogers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.