Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 3:

Another proof of the extraordinary popularity of the new habit is to be found in the fact that by the seventeenth year of the reign of James I—the arch-enemy of tobacco—that is, by 1620, the Society of tobacco-pipe-makers had become so very numerous and considerable a body that they were incorporated by royal charter, and bore on their shield a tobacco plant in full blossom. The Society's motto was happily chosen—"Let brotherly love continue."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 13:

The fine lady disliked tobacco. The author of "A Pipe of tobacco," in Dodsley's well-known "Collection," to which reference has already been made, wrote:

Ladies, when pipes are brought, affect to swoon;
They love no smoke, except the smoke of Town.
* * * * * * *
Citronia vows it has an odious stink;
She will not smoke (ye gods!)-but she will drink;
and the same writer describes tobacco as "By ladies hated, hated by the beaux." Although the fine lady may have affected to swoon at the sight of pipes, and belles generally, like the beaux, may have disdained tobacco as vulgar, yet there were doubtless still to be found here and there respectable women who occasionally indulged in a smoke. In an early Spectator, Addison gives the rules of a "Twopenny Club, erected in this Place, for the Preservation of Friendship and good Neighbourhood," which met in a little ale-house and was frequented by artisans and mechanics. Rule II was, "Every member shall fill his pipe out of his own box"; and Rule VII was, "If any member brings his wife into the club, he shall pay for whatever she drinks or smokes."

In one of the valuable volumes issued by the Georgian Society of Dublin a year or two ago, Dr. Mahaffy, writing on the mid-eighteenth century society of the Irish capital, quotes an advertisement by a Dublin tobacconist of "mild pigtail for ladies" which suggests the alarming question-Did Irish ladies chew?

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