Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

In the 'fifties the pipes smoked were mostly clays. There were the long clays or "churchwardens," to be smoked in hours of ease and leisure; and the short clays—"cutties"—which could be smoked while a man was at work. Milo, a tobacconist in the Strand, and Inderwick, whose shop was near Leicester Square, were famous for their pipes, which could be bought for 6d. apiece. A burlesque poem of 1853, in praise of an old black pipe, says:

Think not of meerschaum is that bowl: away,
Ye fond enthusiasts! it is common clay,
By Milo stamped, perchance by Milo's hand,
And for a tizzy purchased in the Strand.
Famed are the clays of Inderwick, and fair
The pipes of Fiolet from Saint Omer.

I am indebted for this quotation to a correspondent of Notes and Queries, September 27, 1913.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 4:

There is a curious entry in Thomas Burton's diary of the proceedings of Cromwell's Parliament, which suggests that there may then have been the luxury of a members' smoking-room. Burton was a member of the Parliaments of Oliver and Richard Cromwell from 1656 to 1659, and made a practice—for which historical students have been and are much his debtors—of taking notes of the debates as he sat in the House. Members sometimes objected to and protested against this note-taking, but Burton quietly went on using his pencil, and though his summaries of speeches are often difficult to follow, argument and sense suffering by compression, he has preserved much very valuable matter. Referring to a debate on January 7, 1656-57, on an attempt to go behind the previously passed Act of Oblivion, the diarist records that "Sir John Reynolds had numbered the House, and said at rising there were 220 at the least, besides tobacconists." This can only mean that there were at least 220 members actually present in the House when it rose, not counting the "tobacconists" or smokers, who were enjoying their pipes, not in the Chamber itself, but in some conveniently adjoining place, which may have been a room for the purpose, or may simply have been the lobby referred to above in the extract from "Mercurius Pragmaticus."

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