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 5: "Old English 'clays,'" says Mr. T.P. Cooper, "are exceedingly interesting, as most of them are branded with the maker's initials. Monograms and designs were stamped or moulded upon the bowls and on the stems, but more generally upon the spur or flat heel of the pipe. Many pipes display on the heels various forms of lines, hatched and milled, which were perhaps the earliest marks of identification adopted by the pipe-makers. In a careful examination of the monograms we are able to identify the makers of certain pipes found in quantities at various places, by reference to the freeman and burgess rolls and parish registers. During the latter half of the seventeenth century English pipes were presented by colonists in America to the Indians; they subsequently became valuable as objects of barter or part purchase value in exchange for land. In 1677 one hundred and twenty pipes and one hundred Jew's harps were given for a strip of country near Timber Creek, in New Jersey. William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, purchased a tract of land, and 300 pipes were included in the articles given in the exchange."
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