Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 5:

The year 1660 that restored Charles II to his throne, restored a gaiety and brightness, not to say frivolity of tone, that had long been absent from English life. The following song in praise of tobacco, taken from a collection which was printed in 1660, is touched with the spirit of the time; though it is really founded on, and to no small extent taken from, some verses in praise of tobacco written by Samuel Rowlands in his "Knave of Clubs," 1611:

To feed on flesh is gluttony,
It maketh men fat like swine;
But is not he a frugal man
That on a leaf can dine?
He needs no linnen for to foul
His fingers' ends to wipe,
That has his kitchin in a box,
And roast meat in a pipe.
The cause wherefore few rich men's sons
Prove disputants in schools,
Is that their fathers fed on flesh,
And they begat fat fools.
This fulsome feeding cloggs the brain
And doth the stomach choak
But he's a brave spark that can dine
With one light dish of smoak.

There is nothing to show that King Charles smoked, nor what his personal attitude towards tobacco may have been.

Read More

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 2:

Tobacco engages
Both sexes, all ages,
The poor as well as the wealthy;
From the court to the cottage,
From childhood to dotage,
Both those that are sick and the healthy.

This chapter and the next deal with the history of smoking during the first fifty years after its introduction as a social habit—roughly to 1630.

The use of tobacco spread with extraordinary rapidity among all classes of society. During the latter part of Queen Elizabeth's reign and through the early decades of the seventeenth century tobacco-pipes were in full blast. Tobacco was triumphant.

Read More