Tobacco History:
The Social History of Smoking
by George Latimer Apperson
First published in 1914
"The Social History of Smoking" by George Latimer Apperson, can be purchased at Amazon.com in two different versions. Depending on the quality of the edition, prices range between $35 and $104.
From Chapter 4: There is a curious entry in Thomas Burton's diary of the proceedings of Cromwell's Parliament, which suggests that there may then have been the luxury of a members' smoking-room. Burton was a member of the Parliaments of Oliver and Richard Cromwell from 1656 to 1659, and made a practice—for which historical students have been and are much his debtors—of taking notes of the debates as he sat in the House. Members sometimes objected to and protested against this note-taking, but Burton quietly went on using his pencil, and though his summaries of speeches are often difficult to follow, argument and sense suffering by compression, he has preserved much very valuable matter. Referring to a debate on January 7, 1656-57, on an attempt to go behind the previously passed Act of Oblivion, the diarist records that "Sir John Reynolds had numbered the House, and said at rising there were 220 at the least, besides tobacconists." This can only mean that there were at least 220 members actually present in the House when it rose, not counting the "tobacconists" or smokers, who were enjoying their pipes, not in the Chamber itself, but in some conveniently adjoining place, which may have been a room for the purpose, or may simply have been the lobby referred to above in the extract from "Mercurius Pragmaticus."
From Chapter 8:
Dr. Farmer was elected Master of Emmanuel in 1775. Years before he had held the curacy of Swavesey, about nine miles out of Cambridge, where he regularly performed the duty. After morning service it was his custom to repair to the local public-house where he enjoyed a mutton-chop and potatoes. Immediately after the removal of the cloth, "Mr. Dobson (his churchwarden) and one or two of the principal farmers, made their appearance, to whom he invariably said, 'I am going to read prayers, but shall be back by the time you have made the punch.' Occasionally another farmer accompanied him from church, when pipes and tobacco"—with the punch—"were in requisition until 6 o'clock." The Sabbath afternoon thus satisfactorily concluded, Farmer returned to college in Cambridge and took a nap, till at nine he went to the parlour of the college where the Fellows usually assembled, and pipes and tobacco concluded a well-spent day.
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