Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 1:

Perhaps the most likely scene of Raleigh's first experiments in the art of smoking was Durham House, which stood where the Adelphi Terrace and the streets between it and the Strand now stand. This was in the occupation of Sir Walter for twenty years (1583-1603), and he was probably resident there when Hariot returned from Virginia to make his report and instruct his employer in the management of a pipe. Walter Thornbury, in his "Haunted London," referring to the story of the servant throwing the ale over his smoking master, says: "There is a doubtful old legend about Raleigh's first pipe, the scene of which may be not unfairly laid at Durham House, where Raleigh lived." The ale story is mythical, but it is highly probable that Sir Walter's first pipes were smoked in Durham House. Dr. Brushfield quotes Hepworth Dixon, in "Her Majesty's Tower," as drawing "an imaginary and yet probable picture of him and his companions at a window of this very house, overlooking the 'silent highway'.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 4:

We know also that the Roundhead soldiers smoked in circumstances that did them no credit. In the account of the trial of Charles I, written by Dr. George Bates, principal physician to his Majesty, and to Charles II also, we read that when the sentence of the Court presided over by Bradshaw, condemning the King "to death by severing his Head from his Body," had been read, the soldiers treated the fallen monarch with great indignity and barbarity. They spat on his clothes as he passed by, and even in his face; and they "blew the smoak of tobacco, a thing which they knew his Majesty hated, in his sacred mouth, throwing their broken Pipes in his way as he passed along."

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