Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

It is somewhat significant that Dickens, in the "Old Curiosity Shop," 1840, makes that repulsive dwarf, Quilp, smoke cigars. When the little monster comes home unexpectedly in the fourth chapter of the book, and breaks up his wife's tea-party, he settles himself in an arm-chair—"with his large head and face squeezed up against the back, and his little legs planted on the table"—with a case-bottle of rum, cold water, and a box of cigars before him. "Now, Mrs. Quilp," he says, "I feel in a smoking humour, and shall probably blaze away all night. But sit where you are, if you please, in case I want you." Quilp smokes cigars one after the other, his wretched wife sitting patiently by, from sunset till some time after daybreak. The dwarf's tastes, however, were catholic. A little later in the book the reader finds him, when encamped in the back parlour of the old man's shop, smoking pipe after pipe, and compelling that knavish attorney, Sampson Brass, to do the same. Tobacco-smoke always caused Brass "great internal discomposure and annoyance"; but this made no difference to Quilp, who insisted on his "friend" continuing to smoke, while he inquired: "Is it good, Brass, is it nice, is it fragrant, do you feel like the Grand Turk?" But Quilp and Brass were not in "society."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 6:

But so early as 1655 there is a sign of change of custom—a change, that is, in the direction of restricting and limiting the hitherto unbounded freedom granted to the use of tobacco. The London Society of Apothecaries on August 15, 1655, held a meeting for the election of a Master and an Upper Warden; and from the minutes of this meeting we learn that by general consent it was forbidden henceforward to smoke in the Court Room while dining or sitting, under penalty of half a crown.

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