… of Lewis Walpope Library, 795.05.05.01, 1756?-1811?. Résumé Debating societies became well-established institutions in London and provincial cities, catering for the taste for public debate among the lower and middling sorts. Topics could … of the public sphere going further down the social scale than gentlemen’s clubs or coffeehouses. They developed in London, and later in provincial cities, in the second half of the eighteenth century. By the mid-eighteenth century, … Associational World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 119. 3 . Mary Thale, ‘Deists, Papists and Methodists at London Debating Societies, 1749–1799’, History (86, no. 283, 1 July 2001), p. 332. Development and Retreat What little we …