Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

In a private letter to me, which I am privileged to quote, Colonel Prideaux adds some further particulars as to the social attitude of early Victorian days towards tobacco—particulars which are the more valuable and interesting as being supplied from personal recollection of those now somewhat distant days. The Colonel writes: "When I was a young man people never thought of smoking in what house-agents call the 'reception-rooms,' the principal reason being that the occupation of these rooms was shared by ladies, and it was 'bad form' (not, by the way, a contemporary expression) to smoke while in the company of the fairer half of creation. Consequently, men had either to indulge in the practice out of doors, or else, as you say, sneak away to the kitchen when the servants had gone to bed, and puff up the chimney. It was only in large houses that a billiard room could be found, and even in a billiard room a pipe or cigar was taboo if ladies were present, while smoking-rooms could no more be found in middle-class houses than bath-rooms. Both cutties and churchwardens were smoked, but the latter of course were not adapted for persons engaged in active pursuits and were essentially of what I may call a sedentary nature. You could not even walk while holding a long churchwarden in your mouth, and consequently the short clay was most favoured by young men at Sandhurst and the Universities.... Labourers smoked short clays when out of doors, and churchwardens when they rested from their labours and took their ease in their inn in the evenings."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

Other significant early tobacconists' signs were "Sir Walter Raleigh," "The Virginian" and "The Tobacco Roll." "Sir Walter," as the reputed introducer of tobacco, was naturally chosen as a sign, and his portrait adorns several shop-bills in the Banks Collection. The American Indians, represented under the figure of "The Virginian," and the negroes were hopelessly confused by the early tobacconists, with results which were sometimes surprising from an ethnological point of view. As the first tobacco imported into this country came from Virginia, a supposed "Virginian" was naturally adopted as a tobacco-seller's sign at an early date. An "Indian" or a "Negro" or a figure which was a combination of both, was commonly represented wearing a kilt or a girdle of tobacco leaves, a feathered head-dress, and smoking a pipe. A tobacco-paper, dating from about the time of Queen Anne, bears rudely engraved the figure of a negro smoking, and holding a roll of tobacco in his hand. Above his head is a crown; behind are two ships in full sail, with the sun just appearing from the right-hand corner above. The foreground shows four little black boys planting and packing tobacco, and below them is the name of the ingenious tradesman-"John Winkley, Tobacconist, near ye Bridge, in the Burrough, Southwark." Sixty years or so ago a wooden figure, representing a negro with a gilt loin-cloth and band with feathered head, and sometimes with a tobacco roll, was still a frequent ornament of tobacconists' shops.

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