Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 8:

Angelo gives some lively pictures of scenes of this kind in the London of about 1780. The Turk's Head, in Gerrard Street, was the meeting-place for "a knot of worthies, principally 'Sons of St. Luke,' or the children of Thespis, and mostly votaries of Bacchus," as the old fencing-master, who loved a little "fine writing," describes them; and here they sat, he says, "taking their punch and smoking, the prevailing custom of the time." About the same time (circa 1790) an evening resort for purposes mostly vicious was the famous Dog and Duck, in St. George's Fields. "The long room," says Angelo, "if I may depend on my memory, was on the ground floor, and all the benches were filled with motley groups, eating, drinking, and smoking." Angelo also mentions the "Picnic Society," a celebrated resort of fashion at the beginning of the nineteenth century, where the odour of tobacco never penetrated. It afforded, he says in his fine way, "a sort of antipodeal contrast to these smoking tavern clubs of the old city of Trinobantes." The same writer speaks of a certain Monsieur Liviez whom he met in Paris in 1772, who had been one of the first dancers at the Italian Opera House, and maître de ballet at Drury Lane Theatre. This gentleman was addicted to self-indulgence, loved good eating, and good and ample drinking, and moreover kept "late hours, Ã l'Anglaise, smoked his pipe, and drank oceans of punch."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 4:

The social history of smoking from the point of view of fashion, during the period covered by this and the next two chapters may be summarized in a sentence. Through the middle of the seventeenth century smoking maintained its hold upon all classes of society, but in the later decades there are distinct signs that the habit was becoming less universal; and it seems pretty clear that by the time of Queen Anne, smoking, though still extensively practised in many classes of society, was to a considerable extent out of vogue among those most amenable to the dictates of Fashion.

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