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 4:

In this country tobacco is said to have invaded even the House of Commons itself. Mr. J.H. Burn, in his "Descriptive Catalogue of London Tokens," writes: "About the middle of the seventeenth century it was ordered: That no member of the House do presume to smoke tobacco in the gallery or at the table of the House sitting as Committees." I do not know what the authority for this order may be, but there is no doubt that smoking was practised in the precincts of the House. In "Mercurius Pragmaticus," December 19-26, 1648, the writer says on December 20, speaking of the excluded members: "Col. Pride standing sentinell at the door, denyed entrance, and caused them to retreat into the Lobby where they used to drink ale and tobacco."

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