Tobacco History:
The Social History of Smoking
by George Latimer Apperson
First published in 1914
"The Social History of Smoking" by George Latimer Apperson, can be purchased at Amazon.com in two different versions. Depending on the quality of the edition, prices range between $35 and $104.
From Chapter 4: We know also that the Roundhead soldiers smoked in circumstances that did them no credit. In the account of the trial of Charles I, written by Dr. George Bates, principal physician to his Majesty, and to Charles II also, we read that when the sentence of the Court presided over by Bradshaw, condemning the King "to death by severing his Head from his Body," had been read, the soldiers treated the fallen monarch with great indignity and barbarity. They spat on his clothes as he passed by, and even in his face; and they "blew the smoak of tobacco, a thing which they knew his Majesty hated, in his sacred mouth, throwing their broken Pipes in his way as he passed along."
From Chapter 7: The antiquary Hearne has left on record an account of a curious smoking match held at Oxford in 1723. It began at two o'clock in the afternoon of September 4 on a scaffold specially erected for the purpose "over against the Theatre in Oxford ... just at Finmore's, an alehouse." The conditions were that any one (man or woman) who could smoke out three ounces of tobacco first, without drinking or going off the stage, should have 12 s. "Many tryed," continues Hearne, "and 'twas thought that a journeyman taylour of St. Peter's in the East would have been victor, he smoking faster than, and being many pipes before, the rest: but at last he was so sick, that 'twas thought he would have dyed; and an old man, that had been a souldier, and smoaked gently, came off conqueror, smoaking the three ounces quite out, and he told one (from whom I had it) that, after it, he smoaked 4 or 5 pipes the same evening." The old soldier was a well-seasoned veteran.
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