COGERS' HALL, a London tavern debating society. In stituted in 1755 at the White Bear Inn, Fleet street, and moved about 185o to Shoe lane; in 1871 it migrated to the Barley Mow Inn, Salisbury square, E.C., and has since moved to the Cannon Inn, Cannon street, E.C. The accepted derivation is from Descartes' Cogito, ergo sum, "The Society of Thinkers." 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." Among its early members Cogers' Hall reckoned John Wilkes, one of its first presidents, and Curran. Later Dickens was a prominent member.
See Peter Rayleigh, History of Ye Antient Society of Cogers (1904).