Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 14:

Although probably the conduct of the Codrington parishioners was unusual, it is certain that in the seventeenth century smoking at meetings held, not in the church itself, but in the vestry, was common. The churchwardens' accounts of St. Mary, Leicester, 1665-6, record the expenditure—"In beer and tobacco from first to last 7s. 10d." In those of St. Alphege, London Wall, for 1671, there are the entries—"For Pipes and Tobaccoe in the Vestry 2s.," and "For a grosse of pipes at severall times 2s." In the next century, however, the practice was modified. The St. Alphege accounts for 1739 have the entry—"Ordered that there be no Smoaking nor Drinking for the future in the Vestry Room during the time business is doing on pain of forfeiting one shilling, Assention Day excepted." From this it would seem fair to infer (1) that there was no objection to the lighting of pipes in the vestry after the business of the meeting had been transacted; and (2) that on Ascension Day for some inscrutable reason there was no prohibition at all of "Smoaking and Drinking."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 9:

The mention of pigtail shows that the House contained pipe- as well as cigar-smokers. A few days later he wrote again to his sisters, but this time from the library, where, he says, "we are in a far better atmosphere than in the smoking-room, whence I wrote to you last week." One wonders why Macaulay, who apparently did not smoke himself, and who, though somewhat more tolerant of tobacco than his father, Zachary Macaulay, evidently did not like the atmosphere of the smoking-room, chose to write there, when the library—where he must surely have felt more at home—was available.

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