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 4: It is certain that the armies of the Parliament were great smokers, for the finds of seventeenth-century pipes on the sites of their camps have been numerous. A considerable number of pipes of the Caroline period, with the usual small elongated bowls, were found in 1902 at Chichester, in the course of excavating the foundations of the Old Swan Inn, East Street, for building the present branch of the London and County Bank.
From Chapter 7: The antiquary Hearne has left on record an account of a curious smoking match held at Oxford in 1723. It began at two o'clock in the afternoon of September 4 on a scaffold specially erected for the purpose "over against the Theatre in Oxford ... just at Finmore's, an alehouse." The conditions were that any one (man or woman) who could smoke out three ounces of tobacco first, without drinking or going off the stage, should have 12 s. "Many tryed," continues Hearne, "and 'twas thought that a journeyman taylour of St. Peter's in the East would have been victor, he smoking faster than, and being many pipes before, the rest: but at last he was so sick, that 'twas thought he would have dyed; and an old man, that had been a souldier, and smoaked gently, came off conqueror, smoaking the three ounces quite out, and he told one (from whom I had it) that, after it, he smoaked 4 or 5 pipes the same evening." The old soldier was a well-seasoned veteran.
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