Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 14:

A clergyman has put it on record that when he went in 1873 as curate-in-charge to an out-of-the-way Norfolk village, at his first early celebration he arrived in church about 7.45 A.M., and, he says, "to my amazement saw five old men sitting round the stove in the nave with their hats on, smoking their pipes. I expostulated with them quite quietly, but they left the church before service and never came again. I discovered afterwards that they had been regular communicants, and that my predecessor always distributed the offertory to the poor present immediately after the service. When these men, in the course of my remonstrance found that I was not going to continue the custom, they no longer cared to be communicants."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

The "Tobacco Roll," either alone or in various combinations, was one of the commonest of early tobacconists' signs, and was in constant use for a couple of centuries. It may still be occasionally seen at the present time in the form of the "twist" with alternate brown or black and yellow coils, which up to quite a recent date was a tolerably frequent adornment of tobacconists' shops, but is now rare. This roll represented what was called spun or twist tobacco. Dekker, in James I's time, speaks of roll tobacco. The youngster who mimics the stage-gallants in Jonson's "Cynthia's Revels" as described in Chapter II (ante; page 31), says that he has "three sorts of tobacco in his pocket," which probably means that it was customary to mix for smoking purposes tobacco of the three usual kinds-roll (or pudding), leaf and cane. One would have thought that a representation of the tobacco plant itself would have been a more natural and comprehensive sign than one particular preparation of the herb, yet representations of the plant were rare, while those of the compressed tobacco known as pudding or roll in the form of a "Tobacco Roll," as described above, were very frequently used as signs.

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