Tobacco History:
The Social History of Smoking
by George Latimer Apperson
First published in 1914
"The Social History of Smoking" by George Latimer Apperson, can be purchased at Amazon.com in two different versions. Depending on the quality of the edition, prices range between $35 and $104.
From Chapter 1: Another tradition gives the old Pied Bull at Islington, long since demolished, as the scene of the momentous event. It is said in its earlier days to have been a country house of Sir Walter's, and according to legend it was in his dining-room in this house that he had his first pipe. Hone, in the first volume of the "Every Day Book" tells how he and some friends visited this Pied Bull, then in a very decayed condition, and smoked their pipes in the dining-room in memory of Sir Walter. From the recently published biography of William Hone by Mr. F.W. Hackwood, we learn that the jovial party consisted of William Hone, George Cruikshank, Joseph Goodyear, and David Sage, who jointly signed a humorous memorandum of their proceedings on the occasion, from which it appears that "each of us smoked a pipe, that is to say, each of us one or more pipes, or less than one pipe, and the undersigned George Cruikshank having smoked pipes innumerable or more or less," and that "several pots of porter, in aid of the said smoking," were consumed, followed by bowls of negus made from "port wine @ 3 s. 6 d. per bottle (duty knocked off lately)" and other ingredients. Speeches were made and toasts proposed, and altogether the four, who desired to "have the gratification of saying hereafter that we had smoked a pipe in the same room that the man who first introduced tobacco smoked in himself," seem to have thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
From Chapter 5: A Sussex rector, the Rev. Giles Moore, of Horsted Keynes, in 1656 and again in 1662, paid 1 s. for two ounces of tobacco, i.e. at the rate of 8 s. per lb. Presumably the rector bought the more expensive Spanish tobacco and the squire the cheaper Virginian. At the annual parish feast held at St. Bride's, Fleet Street, London, on May 24, 1666, the expenses included 3 d. for tobacco for twenty or more adults. This too was doubtless Virginian or colonial tobacco. The North Elmham Church Accounts (Norfolk) for 1673 show that 12 s. 4 d. was paid for "Butter, cheese, Bread, Cakes, Beere and Tobacco and Tobacco Pipes at the goeing of the Rounds of the Towne." On the occasion of a similar perambulation of the parish boundaries in 1714-15 the churchwardens paid for beer, pipes and tobacco, cakes and wine. The account-books of the church and parish of St. Stephen, Norwich, for 1696-97 show 2 s. as the price of a pound of tobacco. These entries, and many others of similar import, show that at feasts and at social and convivial gatherings of all kinds, tobacco maintained its ascendancy. Pipes and tobacco were included in the usual provision for city feasts, mayoral and other; and smoking was made a particular feature of the Lord Mayor's Show of 1672. A contemporary pamphleteer says that in the Show of that year were "two extreme great giants, each of them at least 15 foot high, that do sit, and are drawn by horses in two several chariots, moving, talking, and taking tobacco as they ride along, to the great admiration and delight of all the spectators." Among the guests at a wedding in London in 1683 were the Lord Mayor, Sheriff and Aldermen of the City, the Lord Chief Justice—the afterwards notorious Jeffreys—and other "bigwigs." Evelyn records with grave disapproval that "these great men spent the rest of the afternoon till 11 at night, in drinking healths, taking tobacco, and talking much beneath the gravity of judges, who had but a day or two before condemned Mr. Algernon Sidney."
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