Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 7:

The London clergy seem to have smoked at one time as a matter of course at their gatherings at Sion College, their headquarters. An entry in the records under date February 14, 1682, relating to a Court Meeting, runs: "Paid Maddocks [the Messenger] for Attendinge and Pipes 6d." How long pipes continued to be concomitants of the meetings of the College's General Court I cannot say; but smoking and the annual dinners were long associated. At the anniversary feast in 1743 there were two tables to provide for, the total number of guests being about thirty, and two "corses" to each. The cost of the food, as Canon Pearce tells us in his excellent and entertaining book on the College and its Library, was £19 15s., or rather more than 13s. a head. The bill for wines and tobacco amounted to five guineas, or about 3s. 6d. a head, and for this modest sum the thirty convives enjoyed eleven gallons of "Red Oporto," one of "White Lisbon," and three of "Mountain," to the accompaniment of two pounds of tobacco (at 3s. 4d. the pound) smoked in "half a groce of pipes" (at 1s.).

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 13:

Anything like general smoking by women in the seventeenth century would appear to have been confined to certain parts of the country. Celia Fiennes, who travelled about England on horseback in the reign of William and Mary, tells us that at St. Austell in Cornwall ("St. Austins," she calls it) she disliked "the custome of the country which is a universal smoaking; both men, women, and children have all their pipes of tobacco in their mouths and soe sit round the fire smoaking, which was not delightful to me when I went down to talk with my Landlady for information of any matter and customes amongst them." What would King James have thought of these depraved Cornish folk? Other witnesses bear testimony to the prevalence of smoking among women in the west of England. Dunton, in that Athenian Oracle which was a kind of early forerunner of Notes and Queries, alluded to pipe-smoking by "the good Women and Children in the West." Misson, the French traveller, who was here in 1698, after remarking that "Tabacco" is very much used in England, says that "the very Women take it in abundance, particularly in the Western Counties. But why the very Women? What Occasion is there for that very? We wonder that in certain Places it should be common for Women to take Tabacco; and why should we wonder at it? The Women of Devonshire and Cornwall wonder that the Women of Middlesex do not take Tabacco: And why should they wonder at it? In truth, our Wonderments are very pleasant Things!" And with that sage and satisfactory conclusion to his catechism we may leave M. Misson, though he goes on to philosophize about the effect of smoking by the English clergy upon their theology!

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