Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 13:

Although, according to M. Misson, the women of Devon and Cornwall might wonder why the women of Middlesex did not take tobacco, it is certain that London and its neighbourhood did contain at least a few female smokers. Tom Brown, often dubbed "the facetious," but to whom a sterner epithet might well be applied, writing about the end of the seventeenth century, mentions a vintner's wife who, having "made her pile," as might be said nowadays, retires to a little country-house at Hampstead, where she drinks sack too plentifully, smokes tobacco in an elbow-chair, and snores away the remainder of her life. And the same writer was responsible for a satirical letter "to an Old Lady that smoak'd Tobacco," which shows that the practice was not general, for the letter begins: "Madam, Tho' the ill-natur'd world censures you for smoaking." Brown advised her to continue the "innocent diversion" because, first, it was good for the toothache, "the constant persecutor of old ladies," and, secondly, it was a great help to meditation, "which is the reason, I suppose," he continues, "that recommends it to your parsons; the generality of whom can no more write a sermon without a pipe in their mouths, than a concordance in their hands."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 9:

Cheroots seem to have been known somewhat earlier. The earliest mention of them is dated about 1670. Sir James Murray, in the great Oxford Dictionary, gives the following interesting extract from an unpublished MS. relating to India, written between 1669 and 1679: "The Poore Sort of Inhabitants vizt. yet Gentues, Mallabars, &c., Smoke theire Tobacco after a very meane, but I judge Original manner, Onely ye leafe rowled up, and light one end, holdinge ye other between their lips ... this is called a bunko, and by ye Portugals a Cheroota." The condemnation of cheroot-or cigar-smoking as a mean method of taking tobacco has an odd look in the light of modern habits and customs.

The use of cigars in this country began to come in early in the last century; and by at least 1830 they were being freely, if privately, smoked. It is probable that the reduction of the duty on cigars from 18s. to 9s. a lb., in 1829, had its effect in making cigars more popular. Croker, in 1831, commenting on Johnson's saying that smoking had gone out, said: "The taste for smoking, however, has revived, probably from the military habits of Europe during the French wars; but instead of the sober sedentary pipe, the ambulatory cigar is chiefly used." Croker's shrewd suggestion was probably not far wide of the truth. It is quite likely, if not highly probable, that the revival of smoking in the shape of the cigar was directly connected with the experiences of British officers in Spain and Portugal during the Peninsular War.

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