sherlock60 | Discussion Post: The Adventure of Black Peter

This week, the canon story we’re looking at is The Adventure of Black Peter and the chosen topic is Tobacco and Smoking.

A few facts:

🚬 While smoking in England has a long history, dating back to the sixteenth century, tobacco was primarily smoked in pipes and by men. [Dr Bruce Rosen] ...by the 18th century, most aristocratic and middle-class people (women as well as men) preferred to enjoy tobacco in the form of snuff, which required no special setting. Smoking—usually with clay pipes, provided free in many taverns—had become largely a working-class habit. That changed with the appearance of cigars in the first quarter of the 19th century. [Michael Hall]

🚬 ...in the early 19th century a new type of coffee house started to appear. Cigar divans, as they were known, were coffee houses which catered for tobacco smokers. The venues featured musicians and poets and were wildly successful and very fashionable to be seen in… What is now Simpson’s in the Strand first opened in 1828 as a chess club and coffee house — The Grand Cigar Divan. [Londonist]

🚬 ...it was only after the Crimean war [1853-56] that cigarette smoking became popular. By the middle of the 1860s, cigarette shops were appearing and with the industrialization of cigarette manufacture by W. D. and H. O. Wills the cigarette had come to Great Britain to stay. The machinery employed by the company could produce 200 cigarettes a minute and undoubtedly contributed to the growing consumption of tobacco. By the '80s Wild Woodbine had become one of the most popular cigarettes in the country and the price of cigarettes had dropped to as low as a penny. [Dr Bruce Rosen]

🚬 In the mid-19th century, prior to the invention of the cigarette, when tobacco was copiously consumed through clay pipes, smoking often resulted in nasty dental disfigurement. A Museum of London study of skeletal remains excavated from a Victorian cemetery in Whitechapel, east London, found most people had "notches" in at least two, and often four, front teeth made through the habitual holding of pipe stems. Osteological analysis of 268 adults buried between 1843 and 1854 found that some disfigurement had occurred in 92 percent of adults exhumed… [Stefano Ambrogi]

🚬 [An etiquette book] published in the mid '50s, described [smoking] as "at best, an ungentlemanly and dirty habit," while Cassell's Hand-book of Etiquette for 1860 warns gentlemen that: If you smoke or take snuff, you will find it difficult to observe that constant personal cleanliness so essential in a gentleman. Before mixing with ladies take off your coat in which you have been smoking, and rinse your mouth, lest your breath should be tainted with the 'weed'. [Dr Bruce Rosen]

🚬 ...Since the smell of cigars and pipes was very unpleasant when it got into heavy curtains or women’s long hair, men at home smoked in their private study or went outside to the garden. Working men smoked in pubs or in the street, not generally at home. Even at the end of the period only 17% of tobacco was sold in the form of cigarettes. Elderly countrywomen sometimes enjoyed a pipe, but women who smoked cigarettes usually did it in secret with a woman friend – cigarette smoking by women was definitely considered ‘fast’ behavior.” [Sally Mitchell, quoted by London By Gaslight]

🚬 By the 1880s, the smoking room had become an essential feature of the country house. ...in 1840, the habit was common, although often not welcomed… Such attitudes made it necessary to provide segregated spaces for smoking. In some country houses, anyone wanting a cigar could expect to be banished to the stables or even the servants’ quarters. Most, however, simply went out of doors. A conservatory, regarded as a semi-outdoor space, was an alternative and many early smoking rooms are close to conservatories.

An alternative position [for a smoking room] was next to a billiard room… from the 1870s onwards, the increasing demarcation of country houses into separate male and female zones made the addition of a smoking room an attractive proposition, as, when grouped with a billiard room, a lavatory and perhaps a gun room, it formed part of a self-contained suite. Here, men could entertain themselves after dinner and enjoy not only a cigar or pipe, but also the sort of conversation from which women were excluded; the smoking room was a masculine retreat equivalent to the female domains of the morning room or boudoir. [Michael Hall]

🚬 Smoking rooms were also outfitted with their own specific interior design. Perhaps most characteristic of the room was the rampant and excessive use of velvet. Home owners had velvet curtains made, some of the furniture was upholstered with velvet and smoking jackets were routinely made of velvet as well. The velvet was thought to absorb smoke to rid its odor from the rest of the house… Smoking rooms were intended to be used after dinner. The women might gather in the drawing room** and the men would retreat to the smoking room.[Tristan Bridges]

🚬 ...amongst men, smoking was a serious social rite. Special clothing was worn by men who engaged in the practice when ladies were not present or had retired. Lady Constance Howard, in Etiquette: What to Do, and How to Do it, published in 1885 tells us that: In country houses in the evening gentlemen usually don a smoking suit, which suits are composed of velvet, satin, Indian silk, cloth braided,etc., according to the wearers' tastes and finances. Slippers are worn instead of boots; but on no account what is called a 'smoking cap' -- that is an article of male attire happily consigned to oblivion. {Dr Bruce Rosen]

🚬 A smoking cap or lounging cap was popular as informal gentleman’s wear from the late 1840s through the 1880s. They were originally worn to keep the head warm in drafty rooms but continued to be in style long after improvements in heating eliminated their necessity… This head gear for at home was brightly colored, ornate, and often bordering on gaudy. They were frequently made at home and were uncomplicated in construction, typically fashioned of wool, silk or velvet and topped with a multicolored tassel. [Joanne Haug]

🚬 By the 1890s, Lady Gertrude Elizaberth Campbell could write, in Etiquette of Good Society, that: A gentleman ... will never smoke in the presence of a lady without first obtaining her permission, and if, when smoking out of doors, he meets any lady, be she friend or foe, he will take his cigar out of his mouth while passing her. [Dr Bruce Rosen]

🚬 1826: ENGLAND is importing 26 pounds of cigars a year. The cigar becomes so popular that within four years, England will be importing 250,000 pounds of cigars a year.
1827: ENGLAND: First friction match invented. Chemist John Walker calls his invention "Congreves," after the rocket maker. Later they became known as "lucifers", then "matches."

1853-1856: EUROPE: CRIMEAN WAR British soldiers learn how cheap and convenient the cigarettes ("Papirossi") used by their Turkish allies are, and bring the practice back to England. The story goes that the English captured a Russian train loaded with provisions--including cigarettes...
1854: ENGLAND: BUSINESS: London tobacconist Philip Morris begins making his own cigarettes. Old Bond Street soon becomes the center of the retail tobacco trade.

1856-1857: ENGLAND: A running debate among readers about the health effects of tobacco runs in the British medical journal, Lancet. The argument runs as much along moral as medical lines, with little substantiation.
1856-1857: ENGLAND: The country's first cigarette factory is opened by Crimean vet Robert Gloag, manufacturing "Sweet Threes"

1901: ENGLAND: END OF AN AGE: QUEEN VICTORIA DIES. Edward VII, the tobacco-hating queen's son and successor, gathers friends together in a large drawing room at Buckingham Palace. He enters the room with a lit cigar in his hand and announces, "Gentlemen, you may smoke."
1901: ENGLAND: BUSINESS: By royal warrant, Philip Morris & Co., Ltd., is appointed tobacconist for King Edward VII. [Gene Borio]

🚬 Although it was not until the middle years of the 20th Century that scientific evidence was used to establish the dangers of smoking, the debate over the risks it entailed was already being engaged in 100 years earlier. Dr George Sigmond writing in The Lancet as early as 1837, described at some length, the consequences of smoking. He did, however, suggest, as was not uncommon, that there were medicinal benefits to be found in tobacco, including the relief of asthma… By the middle of the century, it was commonly accepted that smoking was likely to be injurious to one's health. But the main concern of the medical profession continued to be excessive smoking. [Dr Bruce Rosen]

🚬 Regarded as eccentrics... anti-smoking campaigners made little headway, but they did have some success with younger smokers, ensuring a clause in the Children’s Act of 1908 forbidding the sale of tobacco to under-16s. [Science Museum]

🚬 1868 UK Parliament passes the Railway Bill which mandates smoke-free
carriages to prevent injury to non-smokers.

1889 Research by Langley and Dickinson on the effect of nicotine on nerve
cells. They hypothesise that there are receptors and transmitters that
respond to stimulation by specific chemicals.

American tobacco entrepreneur, James Buchanan (“Buck”) Duke forms
the American Tobacco Company: a conglomerate of the five leading
American tobacco companies.

1901 Buck Duke buys the British Ogden tobacco firm, signalling a raid on the
British industry. This prompts British companies to join together to
counter Duke’s take-over. Imperial Tobacco is formed .

1902 The American and British tobacco companies come to an agreement:
Imperial and American agree to stay in their own countries and unite to
form the British American Tobacco Company (BAT) to sell both
companies’ brands abroad.

Philip Morris sets up a corporation in New York to sell its British brands,
including one called ‘Marlboro’.

1912 First strong connection is made between lung cancer and smoking. Dr I[saac]
Adler is the first to strongly suggest that lung cancer is related to smoking.

1916 Cigarette smoking becomes widespread among soldiers as tobacco is
included in army rations during the First World War. [ASH]

🚬 Not only did [the American, James Buchanan] Duke help create the modern cigarette, he also pioneered the marketing and distribution systems that have led to its success on every continent. In 1880, at the age of 24, Duke entered what was then a niche within the tobacco business - ready-rolled cigarettes… Two years later Duke saw an opportunity. He began working with a young mechanic called James Bonsack, who said he could mechanise cigarette manufacturing. Bonsack's machine revolutionised the cigarette industry. "It cranked out what was essentially a cigarette of infinite length, cut into the appropriate lengths by whirling shears," says Robert Proctor.

...the new machine produced 120,000 cigarettes a day, about a fifth of US consumption at the time. "The problem was he produced more cigarettes than he could sell," says Goodman. "He had to work out how to capture this market." The answer was to be found in advertising and marketing. Duke sponsored races, gave his cigarettes out for free at beauty contests and placed ads in the new "glossies" - the first magazines. [William Kremer]

🚬 US surgeon Alton Ochsner recalled that when he was a medical student in 1919 his class was summoned to observe an autopsy of a lung cancer victim. At that time, the disease was so rare it was thought unlikely the students would ever get another chance… "The cigarette is the deadliest artefact in the history of human civilisation," says Robert Proctor of Stanford University. "It killed about 100 million people in the 20th Century." [William Kremer]

Some useful resources:

Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that Cigarette By Dr Bruce Rosen, on Victorian History.

Stubbed out: the rise and fall(?) of smoking in Britain On the Science Museum's History of Medicine website.

Smoking Etiquette from the Victorian Era to the Early 20th Century On Etiquipedia.

Tobacco Timeline By Gene Borio, on Tobacco.org

Smoking Etiquette By Camille Hadley Jones, on Edwardian Promenade.

Key dates in the history of anti-tobacco campaigning On the ASH website (Action on Smoking and Health). You have to download the PDF to view it.

Sherlock Holmes's Addictions By Dr Andrzej Diniejko, D. Litt., on The Victorian Web.

James Buchanan Duke: Father of the modern cigarette By William Kremer, on the BBC website.

Pipes, puffing and concerts! On London By Gaslight.

The rise and fall of the smoking room By Michael Hall, on Country LIfe.

Early Victorian Days On Giveup.ca

Later Victorian Days On Giveup.ca

Smoking By Women On Giveup.ca

Smoking Rooms – Unintentionally Providing Space for Gender Inequality By Tristan Bridges, on Inequality by (Interior) Design.

Smoking in British popular culture 1800-2000 A review by Dr Sean O'Connell, University of Ulster, of the book by Matthew Hilton. The review is an interesting article in its own right.

A History Of Tobacco In London On Londonist.

The surprising history of London's lost tobacco houses By Dr Matthew Green, on the Telegraph website. Nothing actually about the Victorian era but there is a reprinted illustration from 1857, which ‘shows gentlemen in a London tobacconist shop’.

Cigarettes and Cigars On The Dictionary of Victorian London.

(ad, Pick Me Up, 1890) Advertisement for a lighter. On The Dictionary of Victorian London.

Punch cartoon, 1859 The difficulty of recognising one’s friends when they are smoking the ‘new pipes’. On The Dictionary of Victorian London.

Anti Everything Societies An 1865 Punch cartoon lampooning the Anti-Tobacco Society.

Victorian Cigarettes By Jennifer Carnell, on Victorian Advertising. ‘A collection of adverts published in the United Kingdom during the Victorian era.’

Victorian Cigars By Jennifer Carnell, on Victorian Advertising. ‘A collection of adverts published in the United Kingdom during the Victorian era.’

Cigarettes - The 1896 Cure for Asthma? A Victorian advert is quoted at the very beginning of the blog post. By Debra Brown, on English Historical Fiction Authors.

Victorian cigarette brands A list of brands. By Mark B. Ward, on his blog.

Bryant & May ‘Flaming Fusee’ matches for cigars and pipes, London, England, 1861-1895 On the Science Museum's History of Medicine website.

Women - In Public - Smoking On The Dictionary of Victorian London. An extract from Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, May 3, 1891.

Women, Smoking, and Art By Kathrynn Dennis, on History Hoydens.

Women and Pipes By Beth Maxwell Boyle, on The Rams Horn Studio.

Smoking and Respectable Femininity By Georgina Grant, on Journal of Victorian Culture Online.

Tobacco Advertising Themes - Targeting Women - Early Years ‘Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising.’ On the Stanford School of Medicine website.

Cigar makers of the East End of London By John Rennie, on eastlondonhistory.com

Snuff (tobacco) On Wikipedia.

Victorian Era Treen Snuff Boxes in the Shape of Shoes On Cogpunk Steamscribe.

Medical Aspects of Tobacco Smoking and the Anti-Tobacco Movement in Britain in the Nineteenth Century By R. B. Walker. An academic work in PDF form.

Daily Life in Victorian England By Sally Mitchell. Brief mention of smoking. This is a preview on Google Books, so it may or may not work for you.

WWI Wednesday: Pipes, Cigarettes, & Cigars! By Camille Hadley Jones, on Edwardian Promenade.

Victorian smokers had rotten teeth to match lungs By Stefano Ambrogi, on Reuters.

Smoking left notches in Victorian teeth By livius drusus, on The History Blog.

Smoking and health in London’s East End in the first half of the 19th century By Don Walker and Michael Henderson. An academic work.

disease caused by smoking On The Dictionary of Victorian London.

Victorian Smoking Jackets and 1880s Chamber Garments On Victoriana Magazine.

Victorian Smoking Cap By Joanne Haug, on Victoriana Magazine.

Victorian asthma cigarettes: who was Dr Batty? On The Quack Doctor.

Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.

Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.