Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 12:

Nothing is more marked in the change in the social attitude towards tobacco than the revolution which has taken place in woman's view of smoking. The history of smoking by women is dealt with separately in the next chapter; but here it may be noted that most of the old intolerance of tobacco has disappeared. "To smoke in Hyde Park," said the late Lady Dorothy Nevill, in 1907, "even up to comparatively recent years, was looked upon as absolutely unpardonable, while smoking anywhere with a lady would have been classed as an almost disgraceful social crime."

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 13:

The ladies who so surprised Dickens were English and American, but at the period in question-the early 'forties of the last century-one of the freaks of fashion at Paris was the giving of luncheon parties for ladies only, at which cigars were handed round.

The first hints of feminine smoking in England may be traced, like so many other changes in fashion, in the pages of Punch. In 1851, steady-going folk were alarmed and shocked at a sudden and short-lived outburst of "bloomerism," imported from the United States. Of course it was at once suggested that women who would go so far as to imitate masculine attire and to emancipate themselves from the usual conventions of feminine dress, would naturally seek to imitate men in other ways also. Leech had a picture of "A Quiet Smoke" in Punch, which depicted five ladies in short wide skirts and "bloomers" in a tobacconist's shop, two smoking cigars and one a pipe, while "one of the inferior animals" behind the counter was selling tobacco. But this was satire and hardly had much relation to fact.

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