Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 8:

Notwithstanding the unfashionableness of tobacco, there were still some noteworthy smokers to be found among the clergy. Dr. Sumner, head master of Harrow, who died in 1771, was devoted to his pipe. The greatest of clerical "tobacconists" of late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century date was the once famous Dr. Parr. It was from him that Dr. Sumner learned to smoke. When he and Parr got together Sumner was in the habit of refilling his pipe again and again in such a way as to be unobserved, at the same time begging Parr not to depart till he had finished his pipe, in order that he might detain him, we are told, in the evening as long as possible.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 2:

Among the general audience of the theatre smoking seems to have been usual also. The anti-tobacconists among those present, few of whom were men, must have suffered by the practice. In that admirable burlesque comedy by Beaumont and Fletcher, "The Knight of the Burning Pestle," 1613, the citizen's wife, addressing herself either to the gallants on the stage, or to her fellow-spectators sitting around her, exclaims: "Fy! This stinking tobacco kills men! Would there were none in England! Now I pray, gentlemen, what good does this stinking tobacco do you? Nothing, I warrant you; make chimneys a' your faces!" But many women viewed tobacco differently, as we shall see in the chapter on "smoking by Women." Moreover, this good woman herself, in the epilogue to the burlesque, invites the gentlemen whom she has before abused for smoking, to come to her house where she will entertain them with "a pottle of wine, and a pipe of tobacco."

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