Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

Undergraduates, like men of letters, did not pay much attention to the conventional attitude of society towards tobacco, and pipes maintained their popularity in college rooms. Thackeray, in the "Book of Snobs," describes youths at a University wine-party as "drinking bad wines, telling bad stories, singing bad songs over and over again. Milk punch—smoking—ghastly headache—frightful spectacle of dessert-table next morning, and smell of tobacco." But the satirist is often tempted to be epigrammatic at the expense of accuracy, and this picture is at least too highly coloured. In the recently published memoir of "J"—John Willis Clark—some reminiscences of the late Registrary are included; and "J" does not recognize Thackeray's picture as quite true of the "wines" of his undergraduate day, i.e. about 1850. "They may," he says, "have 'told bad stories and sung bad songs,' as Thackeray says in his 'Book of Snobs.' I can only say that I never heard either the one or the other." But certainly there was noise, and there was smoke—plenty of it. "Conversation there was none," says "J," "only a noise. Then came smoke. In a short time the atmosphere became dense, the dessert and the wine came to an end, and it was chapel time (mercifully)." One story Clark tells of an extraordinary attempt to smoke. Referring to the compulsory "chapels," he says that as a rule everybody behaved with propriety, whether they regarded the attendance as irksome or otherwise. But, he admits, "'Iniquity Corner,' as the space at the east end on each side of the altar was called, may occasionally have effectually sheltered card-playing; but when a young snob went so far as to light a cigar there, he had the pleasure of finishing it in the country, for he was rusticated. It was on a cognate occasion in Jesus College, in which cobblers' wax played a prominent part, that Dr. Corrie dismissed the culprit, after a severe lecture, with these admirable words: 'Your conduct, sir, is what a Christian would call profane, and a gentleman vulgar.'"

Read More

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 4:

In this country tobacco is said to have invaded even the House of Commons itself. Mr. J.H. Burn, in his "Descriptive Catalogue of London Tokens," writes: "About the middle of the seventeenth century it was ordered: That no member of the House do presume to smoke tobacco in the gallery or at the table of the House sitting as Committees." I do not know what the authority for this order may be, but there is no doubt that smoking was practised in the precincts of the House. In "Mercurius Pragmaticus," December 19-26, 1648, the writer says on December 20, speaking of the excluded members: "Col. Pride standing sentinell at the door, denyed entrance, and caused them to retreat into the Lobby where they used to drink ale and tobacco."

Read More