Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 3:

It would seem, from one example I have noted, as if in some places smoking were not allowed in public-houses. In the account-book of St. Stephen's Church and Parish, Norwich, the income for the year 1628-29 included on one occasion 20s. received by way of fine from one Edmond Nockals for selling a pot of beer "wanting in measure, contrary to the law," and another sovereign from William Howlyns for a like offence. This is right and intelligible enough; but on another occasion in the same year each of these men, who presumably were ale-house keepers, had to pay 30s.—a substantial sum considering the then value of money—for the same offence and "for suffering parishioners to smoke in his house." I have been unable to obtain any information as to why a publican should have been fined an additional 10s. for the heinous offence of allowing a brother parishioner to smoke in his house.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 11:

By the end of the nineteenth century the snuff-box which once upon a time stood upon the mantelpiece of every club, had disappeared. The habit of snuffing had long been falling into desuetude. The cigar dealt the snuff-box its death-blow and the cigarette was chief mourner at its funeral.

As in other periods, men of letters and artists ignored the social prejudices and conventions about tobacco, and laughed at the artificial distinctions drawn between cigars and pipes. It is said that the late Sir John Millais smoked a clay pipe in his carriage when he was part of the first Jubilee procession of Queen Victoria-a performance, if it took place, which would certainly have horrified her tobacco-hating Majesty. Tennyson and his friends smoked their pipes as they had always done-and old-fashioned clay pipes too. Sir Norman Lockyer, referring to a period about 1867, mentions Monday evenings in his house which were given up to friends "who came in, sans cérémonie, to talk and smoke. Clays from Broseley, including 'churchwardens' and some of larger size (Frank Buckland's held an ounce of tobacco) were provided, and the confirmed smokers (Tennyson, an occasional visitor, being one of them) kept their pipes, on which the name was written, in a rack for future symposia."

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