Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

The fear of the odour of tobacco-smoke was extraordinary. Mr. J.C. Buckmaster in his reminiscences describes the famous debating society at Cogers' Hall, and says that "after one night at the Cogers' it took three days on a common to purify your clothes" from the smoke. The journalists and Bohemians who met at the Cogers were above (or below) the dictates of fashion, and smoking was always a feature of their gatherings. The "yard of clay" is provided gratis for members, and it is to its almost universal use, says Mr. Peter Rayleigh, in his book on "The Cogers and Fleet Street," "that Cogers owe their existence in the present quarters. Once upon a time the Cogers 'swarmed' to a well-appointed room, where carpets covered the floors, the chairs were upholstered, and the tables had finely polished marble tops. The hot pipes and smouldering matches stained the table tops and burnt the carpets, so that they had the option of abandoning either the pipe or the quarters. Old customs die hard with Cogers, and they stuck to their pipe.... The pipe is a feature in all illustrations of Cogerian meetings."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 13:

The scene is a tavern interior. Around the table are four men and a woman, while a boy approaches carrying two huge measures of ale. One man is smoking furiously, while on the table lie three other pipes—one for each man—and sundry pots and glasses. The woman is plainly a convivial soul; but there is no pipe for her, and such provision was no doubt unusual.

T here is direct evidence, too, besides the story in the first paragraph of this chapter, that women disliked the prevalence of smoking. In Marston's "Antonio and Mellinda," 1602, Rosaline, when asked by her uncle when she will marry, makes the spirited reply—"Faith, kind uncle, when men abandon jealousy, forsake taking of tobacco, and cease to wear their beards so rudely long. Oh, to have a husband with a mouth continually smoking, with a bush of furs on the ridge of his chin, readie still to flop into his foaming chops, 'tis more than most intolerable;" and similar indications of dislike to smoking could be quoted from other plays.
On the other hand, it is certain that from comparatively early in the seventeenth century there were to be found here and there women who smoked.

On the title-page of Middleton's comedy, "The Roaring Girle," 1611, is a picture of the heroine, Moll Cutpurse, in man's apparel, smoking a pipe, from which a great cloud of smoke is issuing.

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