Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 7:

The week-end habit was strong among London tradesmen in those days. Another Connoisseur paper of 1754 refers to the citizens' country-boxes as dusty retreats, because they were always built in close contiguity to the highway so that the inhabitants could watch the traffic, in the absence of anything more sensible to do, where "the want of London smoke is supplied by the smoke of Virginia tobacco," and where "our chief citizens are accustomed to pass the end and the beginning of every week." In the following year there is a description of a visit to Vauxhall by a worthy citizen with his wife and two daughters. After supper the poor man sadly laments that he cannot have his pipe, because his wife, with social ambitions, deems that it is "ungenteel to smoke, where any ladies are in company."

Again, in the Connoisseur's rival, the World, founded and conducted by Edward Moore, there is a letter, in the number dated February 19, 1756, from a citizen who says: "I have the honour to be a member of a certain club in this city, where it is a standing order, That the paper called the World be constantly brought upon the table, with clean glasses, pipes and tobacco, every Thursday after dinner."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 6:

There was clearly no prejudice against smoking at Cambridge. Abraham de la Pryme notes in his diary for the year 1694 that when it was rumoured in May of that year that a certain house opposite one of the colleges was haunted, strange noises being heard in it, several scholars of the college said, "Come, fetch us a good pitcher of ale, and tobacco and pipes, and wee'l sit up and see this spirit." The ale was duly provided, the pipes were lit, and the courageous smokers spent the night in the house, sitting "singing and drinking there till morning," but, alas! they neither saw nor heard anything.

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