Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 8:

In the fashionable world the snuff-box was all-powerful. The Prince Regent was devoted to snuff, but disdained tobacco. He had a "cellar of snuff," which after his death was sold, said John Bull, August 15, 1830, "to a well-known purveyor, for £400." Lord Petersham, famous among dandies, made a wonderful collection of snuffs and snuff-boxes, and was curious in his choice of a box to carry. Gronow relates that once when a light Sèvres snuff-box which Lord Petersham was using, was admired, the noble owner replied, with a gentle lisp—"Yes, it is a nice summer box—but would certainly be inappropriate for winter wear!" The well-known purveyor who bought the Prince Regent's cellar of snuff, and who bought also Lord Petersham's stock, was the Fribourg of Fribourg and Treyer, whose well-known old-fashioned shop at the top of the Haymarket, with a bow-window on each side of the door, still gives an eighteenth-century flavour to that thoroughfare. All the dandies of the period were connoisseurs of snuff, and imitated the royal mirror of fashion in their devotion to the scented powder. Young Charles Stanhope wrote to his brother on November 5, 1812—"I have learnt to take snuff among other fashionable acquirements, a custom which, of course, you have learnt and will be able to keep me in countenance." But no dandies or young men of fashion smoked. Tobacco, save in the disguise of snuff, was tabooed.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 13:

Women smokers were not confined to any one class of society. The Rev. Giles Moore, Rector of Horsted Keynes, Sussex, made a note in his journal and account book in 1665 of "Tobacco for my wyfe, 3d." As from other entries in Mr. Moore's account book we know that two ounces cost him one shilling, we may wonder what Mrs. Moore was going to do with her half-ounce. There is no other reference to tobacco for her in the journal and account book. Possibly she was not a smoker at all, but needed the tobacco for some medicinal purpose. There is ample evidence to show that in the seventeenth century extraordinary medicinal virtues continued to be attributed to the "divine weed."

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