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Tobacco History:
The Social History of Smoking
by George Latimer Apperson
First published in 1914

Even the staid Quakers smoked. George Fox's position in regard to tobacco was curious. He did not smoke himself; but on one occasion he was offered a pipe by a jesting youth who thought thereby to shock so saintly a person. Fox says in his "Journal," "I lookt upon him to bee a forwarde bolde lad: and tobacco I did not take: butt ... I saw hee had a flashy empty notion of religion: soe I took his pipe and putt it to my mouth and gave it to him again to stoppe him lest his rude tongue should say I had not unity with ye creation." The incident is curious, but testifies to Fox's tolerance and breadth of outlook.

Many of his followers smoked, sometimes apparently to such an extent as to cause scandal among their brethren. The following is an entry in the minutes of the Friends' Monthly Meeting at Hardshaw, Lancashire: "14th of 4th mo. 1691. It being considered that the too frequent use of smoking Tobacco is inconsistent with friends holy profession, it is desired that such as have occasion to make use thereof take it privately, neither too publicly in their own houses, nor by the highways, streets, or in alehouses or elsewhere, tending to the abetting the common excess." Another Lancashire Monthly Meeting, Penketh, under date "18th 8th mo. 1691" suggested that Friends were "not to smoke during their labour or occupation, but to leave their work and take it privately"—a suggestion which clearly proceeded from non-smokers. The smug propriety of these recommendations to enjoy a smoke in private is delightful.

At the Quarterly Meeting of Aberdeen Friends in 1692 a "weighty paper containing several heads of solid advyces and Counsells to friends" sent by Irish Quakers, was read. These counsels abound with amusingly prim suggestions. Among them is the warning to "take heed of being overcome with strong drink or tobacco, which many by custome are brought into bondag to the creature." The Aberdeen Friends themselves a little later were greatly concerned at the increasing indulgence in "superfluous apparell and in vain recreations among the young ones"; and in 1698 they issued a paper dealing in great detail with matters of dress and deportment. Among a hundred other things treated with minutest particularity, the desire is expressed that "all Idle and needless Smoaking of Tobacco be forborn."

William Penn did not like tobacco and was often annoyed by it in America. Clarkson, his biographer, relates that on one occasion Penn called to see some old friends at Burlington, who had been smoking, but who, in consideration for his feelings, had put their pipes away. Penn smelt the tobacco, and noticing that the pipes were concealed, said, "Well, friends, I am glad that you are at last ashamed of your old practice." "Not entirely so," replied one of the company, "but we preferred laying down our pipes to the danger of offending a weaker brother."

Many of the tobacco-boxes used in the latter part of the seventeenth century were imported from Holland. They were long or oval and were usually made of brass. They can be easily identified by their engraved subjects and Dutch inscriptions. An example in the Colchester Museum is made of copper and brass, with embossed designs and inscriptions, representing commerce, &c., on the base and lid. It has engraved on the sides the name and address of its owner—"Barnabas Barker, Wyvenhoe, Essex." The similar boxes later made in England usually had embossed ornamentation.

The local authorities in our eastern counties seem to have had some curious ideas of their own as to where tobacco should or should not be smoked. In a previous chapter we have seen that at Norwich, ale-house keepers were fined for permitting smoking in their houses. At Methwold, Suffolk, the folk improved upon this. The court-books of the manor of Methwold contain the following entry made at a court held on October 4, 1695: "We agree that any person that is taken smoakeinge tobacco in the street shall forfitt one shillinge for every time so taken, and itt shall be lawfull for the petty constabbles to distrane for the same for to be putt to the uses abovesaid [i.e. "to the use of the town"]. Wee present Nicholas Baker for smoakeinge in the street, and doe amerce him 1s." The same rule is repeated at courts held in the years 1696 and 1699, but no other fine is mentioned at any subsequent courts. The good folk at Methwold may have been adepts at petty tyranny, but such an absurd regulation must soon have become a dead letter. While we are in the eastern counties we may note that in 1694 there died at Ely an apothecary named Henry Crofts, who owned, among some other unusual items in his inventory, casks of brandy and tobacco, which shows that even at that date, when regular tobacconists' shops for the sale of tobacco had long been common, the old business connexion between apothecaries and tobacco still occasionally existed.

The clay pipes called "aldermen," with longer stems than their predecessors, tipped with glaze, came into use towards the end of the seventeenth century. They must not be confused with the much longer "churchwarden" or "yard of clay" which was not in vogue till the early years of the nineteenth century.

Towards the close of the seventeenth century signs may be detected of some waning in the universal popularity of tobacco. There are hints of change in the records of City and other companies. Tobacco had always figured prominently in the provision for trade feasts. In 1651 the Chester Company of Barbers, Surgeons, Wax and Tallow Chandlers—a remarkably comprehensive organization—paid for "Sack beere and Tobacco" at the Talbot on St. Luke's Day, October 18, on the occasion of a dinner given to the Company by one Richard Walker; and similar expenditure was common among both London and provincial Companies. The court-books of the Skinners Company of London show that in preparation for their annual Election Dinner in 1694, the cook appeared before the court and produced a bill of fare which, with some alterations, was agreed to. The butler then appeared and undertook to provide knives, salt, pepper-pots, glasses, sauces, &c., "and everything needfull for £7. and if he gives content then to have £8. he provides all things but pipes, Tobacco, candles and beer"—which apparently fell to the lot of some other caterer.

But so early as 1655 there is a sign of change of custom—a change, that is, in the direction of restricting and limiting the hitherto unbounded freedom granted to the use of tobacco. The London Society of Apothecaries on August 15, 1655, held a meeting for the election of a Master and an Upper Warden; and from the minutes of this meeting we learn that by general consent it was forbidden henceforward to smoke in the Court Room while dining or sitting, under penalty of half a crown.

The more fashionable folk of the Restoration Era and later began to leave off if not to disdain the smoking-habit. Up to about 1700 smoking had been permitted in the public rooms at Bath, but when Nash then took charge, tobacco was banished. Public or at least fashionable taste had begun to change, and Nash correctly interpreted and led it. Sorbière, who has been quoted in the previous chapter, remarked in 1663 that "People of Quality" did not use tobacco so much as others; and towards the end of the century and in Queen Anne's time the tendency was for tobacco to go out of fashion. This did not much affect its general use; but the tendency—with exceptions, no doubt—was to restrict the use of tobacco to the clergy, to country squires, to merchants and tradesmen and to the humbler ranks of society—to limit it, in short, to the middle and lower classes of the social commonwealth as then organized. In the extraordinary record of inanity which Addison printed as the diary of a citizen in the Spectator of March 4, 1712, the devotion of the worthy retired tradesman to tobacco is emphasized. This is the kind of thing: "Monday ... Hours 10, 11 and 12 Smoaked three Pipes of Virginia ... one o'clock in the afternoon, chid Ralph for mislaying my Tobacco-Box.... Wednesday ... From One to Two Smoaked a Pipe and a half.... Friday ... From Four to Six. Went to the Coffee-house. Met Mr. Nisby there. Smoaked several Pipes."

There was indeed no diminution of tobacco-smoke in the coffee-houses. A visitor from abroad, Mr. Muralt, a Swiss gentleman, writing about 1696, said that character could be well studied at the coffee-houses. He was probably not a smoker himself, for he goes on to say that in other respects the coffee-houses are "loathsome, full of smoke like a guardroom, and as much crowded." He further observed that it was common to see the clergy of London in coffee-houses and even in taverns, with pipes in their mouths. A native witness of about the same date, Ned Ward, writes sneeringly in his "London Spy," 1699, of the interior of the coffee-house. He saw "some going, some coming, some scribbling, some talking, some drinking, some smoking, others jingling; and the whole room stinking of tobacco, like a Dutch scoot, or a boatswain's cabin.... We each of us stuck in our mouths a pipe of sotweed, and now began to look about us." Ward's contemporary, Tom Brown, took a different tone: he wrote of "Tobacco, Cole and the Protestant Religion, the three great blessings of life!"—as strange a jumble as one could wish for.

Even children seem to have smoked sometimes in the coffee-houses. Ralph Thoresby, the Leeds antiquary, tells a strange story. He declares that, one evening which he spent with his brother at Garraway's Coffee-house, February 20, 1702, he was surprised to see his brother's "sickly child of three years old fill its pipe of tobacco and smoke it as audfarandly as a man of three score; after that a second and a third pipe without the least concern, as it is said to have done above a year ago." A child of two years of age smoking three pipes in succession is a picture a little difficult to accept as true. As this is the only reference to tobacco in the whole of his "Diary," it is not likely that Thoresby was himself a smoker.

At the coffee-house entrance was the bar presided over by the predecessors of the modern barmaids—grumbled at in a Spectator as "idols," who there received homage from their admirers, and who paid more attention to customers who flirted with them than to more sober-minded visitors. They are described by Tom Brown as "a charming Phillis or two, who invited you by their amorous glances into their smoaky territories." Admission cost little. There you might see—

The allusions in the Spectator to smoking in the coffee-houses are frequent. "Sometimes," says Addison, in his title character in the first number of the paper, "sometimes I smoak a pipe at Child's and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the Post-man, over-hear the conversation of every table in the room." And here is a vignette of coffee-house life in 1714 from No. 568 of the Spectator: "I was yesterday in a coffee-house not far from the Royal Exchange, where I observed three persons in close conference over a pipe of tobacco; upon which, having filled one for my own use, I lighted it at the little wax candle that stood before them; and after having thrown in two or three whiffs amongst them, sat down and made one of the company. I need not tell my reader, that lighting a man's pipe at the same candle is looked upon among brother-smoakers as an overture to conversation and friendship." From the very beginning smoking has induced and fostered a spirit of comradeship.