Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 14:

Another eighteenth-century clerical worthy, the famous Dr. Parr, an inveterate smoker, was accustomed to do what Mr. Disney prevented Archbishop Blackburn from doing—he smoked in his vestry at Hatton. This he did before the sermon, while the congregation were singing a hymn, and apparently both parties were pleased, for Parr would say: "My people like long hymns; but I prefer a long clay."

Robert Hall, the famous Baptist preacher, having once upon a time strongly denounced smoking as an "odious custom," learned to smoke himself as a result of his acquaintance with Dr. Parr. Parr was such a continual smoker that anyone who came into his company, if he had never smoked before, had to learn the use of a pipe as a means of self-defence. Hall, who became a heavy smoker, is said to have smoked in his vestry at intervals in the service. He probably found some relief in tobacco from the severe internal pains with which for many years he was afflicted.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

A roll of tobacco, it may be noted, was a common form of payment to the Fleet parsons for their scoundrelly services. Pennant, writing in 1791, describes how these men hung out their frequent signs of a male and female hand conjoined, with the legend written below: "Marriages performed within." Before his shop walked the parson-"a squalid, profligate figure, clad in a tattered plaid nightgown, with a fiery face, and ready to couple you for a dram of gin, or roll of tobacco."

Combinations of the roll in tobacconists' signs occur occasionally. In 1660 there was a "Tobacco Roll and Sugar Loaf" at Gray's Inn Gate, Holborn. In 1659 James Barnes issued a farthing token from the "Sugar Loaf and Three Tobacco Rolls" in the Poultry, London. The "Sugar Loaf" was the principal grocer's sign, and so when it is found in combination with the tobacco roll at this time it may reasonably be assumed that the proprietor of the business was a grocer who was also a tobacconist.

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