The Social History of SmokingApperson, George Latimer
History
The Social History of Smoking
Apperson, George Latimer
Smoking
"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."
The French traveller, Sorbière, who visited London in 1663, declared
that the English were naturally lazy and spent half their time in
taking tobacco. They smoked after meals, he observed, and conversed
for a long time. "There is scarce a day passes," he wrote, "but a
Tradesman goes to the Ale-house or Tavern to smoke with some of his
Friends, and therefore Public Houses are numerous here, and Business
goes on but slowly in the Shops"; but, curiously enough, he makes no
mention of coffee-houses. A little later they were too common and too
much frequented to be overlooked. An English writer on thrift in 1676
said that it was customary for a "mechanic tradesman" to go to the
coffee-house or ale-house in the morning to drink his morning's
draught, and there he would spend twopence and consume an hour in
smoking and talking, spending several hours of the evening in similar
fashion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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