Tobacco History:
The Social History of Smoking
by George Latimer Apperson
First published in 1914
"The Social History of Smoking" by George Latimer Apperson, can be purchased at Amazon.com in two different versions. Depending on the quality of the edition, prices range between $35 and $104.
From Chapter 1: Another tradition gives the old Pied Bull at Islington, long since demolished, as the scene of the momentous event. It is said in its earlier days to have been a country house of Sir Walter's, and according to legend it was in his dining-room in this house that he had his first pipe. Hone, in the first volume of the "Every Day Book" tells how he and some friends visited this Pied Bull, then in a very decayed condition, and smoked their pipes in the dining-room in memory of Sir Walter. From the recently published biography of William Hone by Mr. F.W. Hackwood, we learn that the jovial party consisted of William Hone, George Cruikshank, Joseph Goodyear, and David Sage, who jointly signed a humorous memorandum of their proceedings on the occasion, from which it appears that "each of us smoked a pipe, that is to say, each of us one or more pipes, or less than one pipe, and the undersigned George Cruikshank having smoked pipes innumerable or more or less," and that "several pots of porter, in aid of the said smoking," were consumed, followed by bowls of negus made from "port wine @ 3 s. 6 d. per bottle (duty knocked off lately)" and other ingredients. Speeches were made and toasts proposed, and altogether the four, who desired to "have the gratification of saying hereafter that we had smoked a pipe in the same room that the man who first introduced tobacco smoked in himself," seem to have thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
From Chapter 7: With the reign of Queen Anne tobacco had entered on a period, destined to be of long duration, when smoking was to a very large extent under a social ban. Pipe- smoking was unfashionable—that is to say, was not practised by men of fashion, and was for the most part regarded as "low" or provincial—from the time named until well into the reign of Queen Victoria. The social taboo was by no means universal—some of the exceptions will be noted in these pages—but speaking broadly, the general, almost universal smoking of tobacco which had been characteristic of the earlier decades of the seventeenth century did not again prevail until within living memory.
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