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 3: The number of shops where tobacco was sold in the early days of its triumph seems to have been extraordinary. Barnaby Rich, one of the most prolific parents of pamphlets in an age of prolific writers, wrote a satire on "The Honestie of this Age," which was printed in 1614. In this production Rich declares that every fellow who came into an ale-house and called for his pot, must have his pipe also, for tobacco was then a commodity as much sold in every tavern, inn and ale-house as wine, ale, or beer. He goes on to say that apothecaries' shops, grocers' shops, and chandlers' shops were (almost) never without company who from morning to night were still taking tobacco; and what a number there are besides, he adds, "that doe keepe houses, set open shoppes, that have no other trade to live by but by the selling of tobacco." Rich says he had been told that a list had been recently made of all the houses that traded in tobacco in and near about London, and that if a man might believe what was confidently reported, there were found to be upwards of 7000 houses that lived by that trade; but he could not say whether the apothecaries', grocers' and chandlers' shops, where tobacco was also sold, were included in that number. He proceeds to calculate what the annual expenditure on smoke must be. The number of 7000 seems very large and is perhaps exaggerated. Round numbers are apt to be over rather than under the mark.
From Chapter 7: There is no mention of Parson Trulliber's pipe, but that pig-breeder and lover can hardly have been a non- smoker. Both the other clerical characters who appear in the book, the Roman Catholic priest who makes an equivocal appearance in the eighth chapter of the third book, and Parson Barnabas, who thinks that his own sermons are at least equal to Tillotson's, smoke their pipes. The other smokers in "Joseph Andrews" are the surgeon and the exciseman who, early in the story, are found sitting in the inn kitchen with Parson Barnabas, " smoking their pipes over some syderand"—the mysterious "cup" being a mixture of cider and something spirituous—and Joseph's father, old Gaffer Andrews, who appears at the end of the story, and complains bitterly that he wants his pipe, not having had a whiff that morning.
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