Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

Tennyson wrote "In Memoriam" at Shawell Rectory, near Lutterworth, Leicestershire. The rector was a Mr. Elmhirst, a native of the poet's Lincolnshire village. The latest historian of Lutterworth says that "The great puffs of tobacco smoke with which he [Tennyson] mellowed his thoughts, proved insufferable to his host, and he was accordingly turned out into Mr. Elmhirst's workshop in the garden, which in consequence became the birthplace of one of the gems of English literature."

Read More

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

A roll of tobacco, it may be noted, was a common form of payment to the Fleet parsons for their scoundrelly services. Pennant, writing in 1791, describes how these men hung out their frequent signs of a male and female hand conjoined, with the legend written below: "Marriages performed within." Before his shop walked the parson-"a squalid, profligate figure, clad in a tattered plaid nightgown, with a fiery face, and ready to couple you for a dram of gin, or roll of tobacco."

Combinations of the roll in tobacconists' signs occur occasionally. In 1660 there was a "Tobacco Roll and Sugar Loaf" at Gray's Inn Gate, Holborn. In 1659 James Barnes issued a farthing token from the "Sugar Loaf and Three Tobacco Rolls" in the Poultry, London. The "Sugar Loaf" was the principal grocer's sign, and so when it is found in combination with the tobacco roll at this time it may reasonably be assumed that the proprietor of the business was a grocer who was also a tobacconist.

Read More