Puss and Mew

What if, Carlile’s shop assistants reasoned, you couldn’t see your bookseller?
Customers entering the Blasphemy Machine: a gigantic clockwork mechanism with nary a
human in sight. A dial listed the names of all the store’s many illicit
publications-The Rights of Man, say, or an issue of Carlile’s
newspaper The Republican. With the dial set to the right title,
and money dropped into a slot, a book or newspaper would come
clattering down into a receptacle.
It is soberin to think that the freedom of the press once
depended upon a mechanism now used to vend Mars bars. But
the “invisible shopman” wasn’t an entirely new concept: during a
crackdown on unlicensed gin in 1737, London taxmen found
themselves confounded by the disappearance of gin shops, despitefji
the streets being as full of outrageously drunk louts as ever. It took
months for taxmen to discover the existence of primitive manned
vending machines called the “puss and mew.” A customer coming
up to one whispered “Puss,” whereupon a vendor crammed inside
answered “Mew.” A hidden drawer popped out to receive coins,
withdrew, and then slid back out with a dram of the demon drink. if
Like the puss and mew, the Temple of Reason’s vending machine
proved only a temporary distraction to authorities, rather like
overturning a chair in the path of someone chasing you; soon they
stepped around it and rounded up employees from behind
clockwork.