Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

Mr. Munby, after this reference to Smollett's adventure, proceeded to claim the honour of having helped to bring the use of wooden pipes into England. In the year 1853 he wrote, "meerschaums and clays were the rule at both the English universities and in all shops throughout the land, and the art of making pipes of wood was either obsolete [it had never been introduced] or wholly in futuro. But a college friend of mine, a Norfolk squire, possessed a gardener who was of an inventive turn, though he was not a Scotchman. This man conceived and wrought out the idea of making pipes of willow-wood, cutting the bowl out of a thick stem, and the tube out of a thinner one growing from the bowl, so that the whole pipe was in one piece. Willow-wood is too soft, so that the pipes did not last long; but they were a valuable discovery, and the young squire's friends bought them eagerly at eighteenpence apiece."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 9:

One of the earliest cigar-smokers must have been that remarkable clergyman, the Rev. Charles Caleb Colton, whose "Lacon," published in 1820, was once popular. Colton was in succession Rector of Tiverton and Vicar of Kew, but on leaving Kew became a wine-merchant in Soho. While at Kew he is said to have kept cigars under the pulpit, where, he said, the temperature was exactly right.

At first even cigar-smoking was confined to comparatively few persons, and the social prejudice against tobacco continued unabated. Thackeray significantly makes Rawdon Crawley a smoker—the action of "Vanity Fair" takes place in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. The original smoking-room of the Athenæum Club, which was founded in 1824, the present building being erected in 1830, was a miserable little room, Dr. Hawtree, on behalf of the committee, announcing that "no gentleman smoked." The Oriental Club, when built in 1826-27, contained no smoking-room at all.

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