Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 3:

A further witness to the prevalence of smoking and to the enormous number of tobacco-sellers' shops is Camden, the antiquary. In his "Annales," 1625, he remarks with curious detail that since its introduction—"that Indian plant called Tobacco, or Nicotiana, is growne so frequent in use and of such price, that many, nay, the most part, with an insatiable desire doe take of it, drawing into their mouth the smoke thereof, which is of a strong scent, through a pipe made of earth, and venting of it againe through their nose; some for wantownesse, or rather fashion sake, and other for health sake, insomuch that Tobacco shops are set up in greater number than either Alehouses or Tavernes."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 6:

There was indeed no diminution of tobacco-smoke in the coffee-houses. A visitor from abroad, Mr. Muralt, a Swiss gentleman, writing about 1696, said that character could be well studied at the coffee-houses. He was probably not a smoker himself, for he goes on to say that in other respects the coffee-houses are "loathsome, full of smoke like a guardroom, and as much crowded." He further observed that it was common to see the clergy of London in coffee-houses and even in taverns, with pipes in their mouths. A native witness of about the same date, Ned Ward, writes sneeringly in his "London Spy," 1699, of the interior of the coffee-house. He saw "some going, some coming, some scribbling, some talking, some drinking, some smoking, others jingling; and the whole room stinking of tobacco, like a Dutch scoot, or a boatswain's cabin.... We each of us stuck in our mouths a pipe of sotweed, and now began to look about us." Ward's contemporary, Tom Brown, took a different tone: he wrote of "Tobacco, Cole and the Protestant Religion, the three great blessings of life!"—as strange a jumble as one could wish for.

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