Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 1:

But certainly pipes were smoked in England before 1584. The plant was introduced into Europe, as we have seen, about 1560, and it was under cultivation in England by 1570. In the 1631 edition of Stow's "Chronicles" it is stated that tobacco was "first brought and made known by Sir John Hawkins, about the year 1565, but not used by Englishmen in many years after." There is only one reference to tobacco in Hawkins's description of his travels. In the account of his second voyage (1564-65) he says: "The Floridians when they travel have a kinde of herbe dryed, which with a cane, and an earthen cup in the end, with fire, and the dried herbs put together do smoke thoro the cane the smoke thereof, which smoke satisfieth their hunger, and therewith they live foure or five days without meat or drinke." smoking was thus certainly known to Hawkins in 1565, but much reliance cannot be placed on the statement in the Stow of 1631 that he first made known the practice in this country, because that statement appears in no earlier edition of the "Chronicles." Moreover, as opposed to the allegation that tobacco was "not used by Englishmen in many years after" 1565, there is the remark by William Harrison, in his "Chronologie," 1588, that in 1573 "the taking in of the smoke of the Indian herbe called Tobacco, by an instrument formed like a little ladell, whereby it passeth from the mouth into the head and stomach, is gretlie taken up and used in England." The "little ladell" describes the early form of the tobacco-pipe, with small and very shallow bowl.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 13:

The history of smoking by women through Victorian days need not detain us long. There have always been pipe-smokers among the women of the poorer classes. Up to the middle of the last century smoking was very common among the hard-working women of Northumberland and the Scottish border. Nor has the practice by any means yet died out. In May 1913, a woman, who was charged with drunkenness at the West Ham police court, laid the blame for her condition on her pipe. She said she had smoked it for twenty years, and "it always makes me giddy!" The writer, in August 1913, saw a woman seated by the roadside in County Down, Ireland, calmly smoking a large briar pipe.

It is not so very long ago that an English traveller heard a working-man courteously ask a Scottish fish-wife, who had entered a smoking-compartment of the train, whether she objected to smoking. The good woman slowly produced a well-seasoned "cutty" pipe, and as she began to cut up a "fill" from a rank-smelling tobacco, replied: "Na, na, laddie, I've come in here for a smoke ma'sel."

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