Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 3:

It has been already stated that the Elizabethan gallant was acquainted with the most fashionable methods of inhaling and exhaling the smoke of tobacco. A singular feature of the enthusiasm for tobacco in the early years of the seventeenth century was the existence of professors of the art of smoking.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 2:

Tobacco was smoked by all classes and in almost all places. It was smoked freely in the streets. In some verses prefixed to an edition of Skelton's "Elinour Rumming" which appeared in 1624, the ghost of Skelton, who was poet-laureate to King Henry VIII, was made to say that he constantly saw smoking:

As I walked between
Westminster Hall
And the Church of Saint Paul,
And so thorow the citie,
Where I saw and did pitty
My country men's cases,
With fiery-smoke faces,
Sucking and drinking
A filthie weede stinking.

Tobacco-selling was sometimes curiously combined with other trades. A Fleet Street tobacconist of this time was also a dealer in worsted stockings. A mercer of Mansfield who died at the beginning of 1624, and who apparently carried on business also at Southwell, had a considerable stock of tobacco. In the Inventory of all his "cattalles and goods" which is dated 24 January 1624, there is included "It. in Tobacco 19.li 0. 0." Nineteen pounds' worth of tobacco, considering the then value of money, was no small stock for a mercer-tobacconist to carry.

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