Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

Even so late as 1861 the attitude towards smoking was still much the same in some quarters. In that year a German scholar, Professor Franz von Holtzendorff, paid a visit to a country gentleman's house in Gloucestershire—Hardwicke Court. Later he printed an account of his experiences, a translation of which was published in this country in 1878. When the professor arrived, his host, the first greeting over, at once pointed out to him a secluded apartment—the one which he thought it most important for a German to know, namely, the smoking-room. "According to his idea," continued the professor, "every German has three national characteristics, smoking, singing, and Sabbath-breaking; the first and only idea in which I found him led astray by an abstract theory." Later, his hostess, explaining to him the method and routine of life in an English country-house, said that the ladies retired about eleven, while the gentlemen finished their day's work in the smoking-room—the secluded apartment—or enjoyed a cigar at the billiard-table; but a smoke in the billiard-room was only allowed if that room was not near the drawing-room or in the hall close by. "You must have often been surprised," she continued, "that we English ladies have such an invincible repugnance to tobacco smoke, but there is no dispensation from our rule of abstinence, except in those rooms which my husband has already pointed out to you."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

From the examples given in Burn's "Descriptive Catalogue of London Tokens" of the seventeenth century, it is clear that the "Tobacco Roll" was a warm favourite. "Three Tobacco Rolls" was also used as a sign. In 1732 there was a "Tobacco Roll" in Finch Lane, on the north side of Cornhill, "over against the Swan and Rummer Tavern." In 1766, Mrs. Flight, tobacconist, carried on her business at the "Tobacco Roll. Next door but one to St. Christopher's Church, Threadneedle Street."

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