Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 8:

A satirical print by Rowlandson contains A Man of Fashion's Journal, dated May 1, 1802. The "man of fashion" rides and drinks, goes to the play, gambles and bets, but his journal contains no reference to smoking. Rowlandson himself smoked, and so did his brother caricaturist, Gillray. Angelo says that they would sometimes meet at such resorts of the "low" as the Bell, the Coal Hole, or the Coach and Horses, and would enter into the common chat of the room, smoke and drink together, and then "sometimes early, sometimes late, shake hands at the door—look up at the stars, say it is a pretty night, and depart, one for the Adelphi, the other to St. James's Street, each to his bachelor's bed."

But outside the fashionable world pipes were still in full blast, and in many places of resort the atmosphere was as beclouded with tobacco-smoke as in earlier days. Grosley, in his "Tour to London," 1765, says that there were regular clubs, which were held in coffee-houses and taverns at fixed days and hours, when wine, beer, tea, pipes and tobacco helped to amuse the company.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

The figure was usually made with a snuff mull in his hand-the highlander being always credited with a great love and a great capacity for snuff-taking. But one curious example was furnished, not only with a mull but with a bat-like implement of unknown use. Mr. Arthur Denman, F.S.A., writing in Notes and Queries, April 17, 1909, said: "I have a very neat little, genuine specimen of the old tobacconist's sign of a 42nd Highlander with his 'mull.' It is 3 ft. 6 in. high, and it differs from those usually met with in that under the left arm is an implement almost exactly like a cricket-bat. This bat has a gilt knob to the handle, and on the shoulder of it are three chevrons in gold, without doubt a sergeant's stripes. On the exposed side of the bat is what would appear to represent a loose strip of wood. This strip is nearly one-third of the width of the instrument, and extends up the middle about two-fifths of the length of the body of it. I can only guess that the bat was, at some time, primarily, an emblem of a sergeant's office, and, secondarily, used for the infliction of chastisement on clumsy or disorderly recruits; and perhaps it was equivalent to the Prügel of German armies, with which sergeants drove lagging warriors into the fray. But is there any record of such an accoutrement as being that of a sergeant in the British army? and what was the purpose of the loose strip, unless it was to cause the blow administered to resound as much as to hurt, as does the wand of Harlequin in a booth."

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