Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. Carpenter’s late-night coffee shop, sited in Covent Garden opposite Russell Street and ostensibly catering to the market porters, which closed only when the last customer had gone home into the dawn [Bee notes that the owner, Carpenter, ‘was a lecher, his handy bar-maid Mrs. Gibson, a travelled dame’].

1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd edn) n.p.: The finish; a small coffee-house in Covent Garden, market, opposite Russel-street, open very early in the morning, and therefore resorted to by debauchees shut out of every other house: it is also called Carpenter’s coffee-house.
1800		Sporting Mag. Apr. XVI 26/2: Made shift to reach the Finish, where we took coffee.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1827		Morn. Chron. (London) 15 Mar. 3/5: A Meeting of some inhabitants of St Paul, Covent Garden, wherein a Mr Roebottom, the proprietor of a Coffee-shop in James-street, best known by the name of the ‘Finish’, is made to accuse me of vilifying his fair fame.
1828		Lytton Pelham III 112: Which shall we do? [...] stroll home; or parade the streets, visit the Cider-Cellar, and the Finish, and kiss the first lass we meet in the morning.
1830		Egan Finish to the Adventures of Tom and Jerry (1889) 128: Let us toddle to the Finish [...] and take an extra cup of coffee.
c.1850		(con. late 18C-early 19C) Peeping Tom (London) 32 138/2: Mother Butler’s — the real, old original Finish [in Covent Garden] where, by the way thorough-going fast men never did finish.
1853		R.S. Surtees Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour 189: We were at the Finish together till six this morning.
1859		G.A. Sala Twice Round the Clock 38: There was the ‘Finish,’—a vulgar, noisy place enough ; but stamped with undying gentility by the patronage of his late Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. Great George ‘finished’ in Covent Garden purlieus; Major Hanger told his stories, Captain Morris sang his songs, there. In a peaceable gutter in front of the ‘Finish,’ Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Esq., M.P., lay down overtaken in foreign wines, and told the guardian of the night that his name was Wilberforce. A wild place, that ‘Finish’ [...].
1868		J. Diprose Clement Danes I 98: We are writing of the days when the Elysium, Mother H.’s, The Finish, Jessop’s, etc., were in their zenith and glory days.

2. any late-night/early-morning café.

1824		J. Wight Mornings in Bow St. 228: Wilkins, having been out on Friday night [...] repaired at five o’clock in the morning to Rowbotham’s ‘final finish’ in James-street, Covent-garden, just by way of finishing himself.
1826		‘Nocturnal Sports’ in Universal Songster II 180/1: Come to the finish for a jolly booze arter our ’ard night’ vork.
1832		Times 6 Oct. 4/1: [He] was charged with having robbed a gentleman [...] of two sovereigns, at Rowbottom’s ‘Finish’ at an early hour of the morning [...] George Chalton was then sworn, and stated that he was head waiter at the Finish.
1837		Sthn Reporter (Cork) 31 Oct. 3/4: [of a Parisian casino] This courtly ‘Finish’, this chartered temple of sensuality and vice, is to be demolished by the hammer of modern reform.
1842		Bell’s Penny Dispatch 1 May 2/5: [H]e has but to inquire for Mother H’s, the Cigar Cellars, or the more modern finish ‘The Town Hotel,’ Bow Street, to ensure him a plentitude of amusement.
1859		G.A. Sala Twice Round the Clock 166: The dreadful night-dens and low revelling houses of past midnight London, the only remnants [...] of the innumerable ‘finishes’ and saloons and night-cellars of a former age.
1860		R. Nicholson Rogue’s Progress (1966) 43: About four o’clock in the morning the swells repaired to Rowbottom’s, the ‘Finish’ in James Street, where drinking and other innocent pastimes were kept up until [...] ten o’clock in the morning.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 131/1: Let us go to a finish – say Jessop’s. Jessop’s finally expired about 1885. It was the building afterwards occupied by the Echo newspaper. [...] In 1896, King William Street, Strand, saw the opening of a brilliantly appointed lounge entitled ‘The Finale’, assuredly good Italian for finish.