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: Among the documents in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland there is a letter patent under the great seal of Charles I, in 1634, granted for the purpose of correcting the irregular sales and restraining the immoderate use of tobacco in Scotland. The letter states that tobacco was used on its first introduction as a medicine, but had since been so largely indulged in and was frequently of such bad quality, as not only to injure the health, but deprave the morals of the King's subjects. These were sentiments worthy of King James. Mr. Matthew Livingstone, who has calendared this document, says that the King therein proceeds, in order to prevent such injurious results of the use of tobacco, to appoint Sir James Leslie and Thomas Dalmahoy to enjoy for seven years the sole power of appointing licensed vendors of the commodity. These vendors, after due examination as to their fitness, were to be permitted, on payment of certain compositions and an annual rent in augmentation of the King's revenue, to sell tobacco in small quantities. The letter further directs that the licensees so appointed shall become bound to sell only sound tobacco—an admirable provision, if a trifle difficult to enforce—and to keep good order in their houses and shops. "The latter clause," adds Mr. Livingstone, "would almost suggest that the tobacco was to be sold for consumption on the premises,"—as I have no doubt it was—"and that the smokers were probably in the habit at their symposiums of using, even as they may still, I dare say, other indulgences not so soothing in their effects as the coveted weed"—a suggestion for which there seems little foundation in the clause to which Mr. Livingstone refers.
From Chapter 5: These seventeenth-century pipes were largely made in Holland of pipe-clay imported from England—to the disgust and loss of English pipe-makers. In 1663 the Company of tobacco-Pipe Makers petitioned Parliament "to forbid the export of tobacco pipe clay, since by the manufacture of pipes in Holland their trade is much damaged." Further, they asked for "the confirmation of their charter of government so as to empower them to regulate abuses, as many persons engage in the trade without licence." The Company's request was granted; but in the next year they again found it necessary to come to Parliament, showing "the great improvement in their trade since their incorporation, 17 James I, and their threatened ruin because cooks, bakers, and ale-house keepers and others make pipes, but so unskilfully that they are brought into disesteem; they request to be comprehended in the Statute of Labourers of 5 Elizabeth, so that none may follow the trade who have not been apprentices seven years."
|