Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 3:

Trickery of another kind is revealed in a scene in Chapman's play "A Humorous Day's Mirth," 1599. A customer at an ordinary says: "Hark you, my host, have you a pipe of good tobacco?" "The best in the town," says mine host, after the manner of his class. "Boy, dry a leaf." Quietly the boy tells him, "There's none in the house, sir," to which the worthy host replies sotto voce, "Dry a dock leaf." But the diner's potations must have been powerful if they had left him unable to distinguish between the taste of tobacco and that of dried dock-leaf.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

Before the end of the seventeenth century, however, the signs were ceasing to have any necessary association with the trade carried on under them, and tobacconists are found with shop-signs which had no reference in any way to tobacco. For instance, to take a few examples from the late Mr. Hilton Price's lists of "Signs of Old London" from Cheapside and adjacent streets, in 1695 John Arundell, tobacconist, was at the "White Horse," Wood Street; in the same year J. Mumford, tobacconist, was at the "Faulcon," Laurence Lane; in 1699 Mr. Brutton, tobacconist, was to be found at the "Three Crowns," under the Royal Exchange; in 1702 Richard Bronas, tobacconist, was at the "Horse Shoe," Bread Street; and in 1766 Mr. Hoppie, of the "Oil Jar: Old Change, Watling Street End," advertised that he "sold a newly invented phosphorus powder for lighting pipes quickly in about half a minute. Ask for a Bottle of Thunder Powder."

Again, in Fleet Street, Mr. Townsend, tobacconist, traded in 1672 at the "Three Golden Balls," near St. Dunstan's Church; while at the end of Fetter Lane, a few years later, John Newland, tobacconist, was to be found at the "King's Head."

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