Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

Notwithstanding that the number of smokers had so largely increased, and was continually increasing, smoking was regarded socially as something of a vice—to be practised in inconvenient places and not too publicly.

There were still plenty of active opponents and denouncers of tobacco. One of the most distinguished was the great Duke of Wellington, who abominated smoking, and was annoyed by the increase of cigar-smoking among officers of the army. In the early 'forties he issued a General Order (No. 577) which contained a paragraph that would have delighted the heart of King James I. It ran thus: "The Commander-in-Chief has been informed, that the practice of smoking, by the use of pipes, cigars, or cheroots, has become prevalent among the Officers of the Army, which is not only in itself a species of intoxication occasioned by the fumes of tobacco, but, undoubtedly, occasions drinking and tippling by those who acquire the habit; and he intreats the Officers commanding Regiments to prevent smoking in the Mess Rooms of their several Regiments, and in the adjoining apartments, and to discourage the practice among the Officers of Junior Rank in their Regiments."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 2:

smoking was not confined to the auditors on the stage, who paid sixpence each for a stool. There was the "lords' room" over the stage, which seems to have corresponded with the modern stage boxes, the price of admission to which appears to have been a shilling, where the pipe was also in full blast. Dekker tells how a gallant at a new play would take a place in the "twelve penny room, next the stage, because the lords and you may seem to be hail fellow, well met"; and Jonson, in "Every Man out of his Humour," 1600, speaks of one who pretended familiarity with courtiers, that he talked of them as if he had "taken tobacco with them over the stage, in the lords' room."

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