Period image of a female cigarette smoker?

[Shockoe Hill Cats]

Re: Period image of a female cigarette smoker?

I hope Marc Shaffner can chime in here, he told me that Gen. Charles P. Stone was reportedly chain-smoking after the mishaps at Balls Bluff, Md. 1861.

[Annette Bethke]

Re: Period image of a female cigarette smoker?

Vicki Betts has done quiet a bit of research of dipping by woman. She wrote an article a few years ago for the Citizen's Companion. Here is a drawing of women taking tobacco.

[markmason]

Re: Period image of a female cigarette smoker?

lots of women smoked pipes and enjoyed a little snuff or chew..

[Johnny Lloyd]

Re: Period image of a female cigarette smoker?

Trying to keep this on-topic... Does anyone have a picture proveable to before or during the period of ANY CIGARETTE smokers? Never seen one other than this one.

[Bmanz1085]

Re: Period image of a female cigarette smoker?

1860: The Census for Virginia and North Carolina list 348 tobacco factories, virtually all producing chewing tobacco. Only 6 list smoking tobacco as a side-product (which is manufactured from scraps left over from plug production).
1870: CONSUMPTION: US has its lowest per capita smoking rate on record - 0.4 cigarettes (The Tax Burden on Tobacco, Historical Compilation Volume 35, 2000)

Even though Phillip Morris was selling Turkish Cigarettes in the 1850s in London, it's probably a safe bet (IMO) the majority of tobacco use was plug for chewing.

[Mississippian]

Re: Period image of a female cigarette smoker?

I believe it was Gen. Richard Taylor who wrote about rolling and smoking a cigarette during a skirmish in Louisiana in 1863. I don't have the book handy, but it quoted his memoir on the subject.

Will MacDonald

[Johnny Lloyd]

Re: Period image of a female cigarette smoker?

From what I have read online in searches (I can try to post some of these later as references, but I'm at work now), the problem with cigarettes in the 1850s to 1860s was that they were low quality scraps left over from cigar/chew production put into low-quality paper wrappers. Nothing got wasted in the factory, including what was on the floor. The nickname of "beggars smokes" was in use for them, obviously lending an idea of low quality. Even though British soldiers returning from the Crimean War adopted the habit of smoking cigarettes from the Turks (shisha pipe tobacco smoked in paper), people in the States were beholden to their plug/twist/chew and cigars/pipes.

I don't know if I buy the argument that cigarette smoking was 'effeminate'. (Sidenote to this: I have heard rumor that the term "f@g" for a cigarette in Britain parlance came over here ans an insult to people that smoked cigarettes in the postwar period.) Perhaps it was a regional-thing (Texans and Louisians were said to have seen their officers smoking them in some period accounts someone posted on here awhile ago).

From most accounts online I have read, "Bull Durham" was produced in North Carolina in 1864, but these were not ready-rolled. It was a bag of tobacco you rolled on your own in scraps of paper.

[FranklinGuardsNYSM]

Re: Period image of a female cigarette smoker?

Where-oh-where is that soldier's letter in which he discusses smoking a cigarette, but assures his reader he's not taken to center-parting his hair? Anyone else remember this?

[Johnny Lloyd]

Re: Period image of a female cigarette smoker?

Where-oh-where is that soldier's letter in which he discusses smoking a cigarette, but assures his reader he's not taken to center-parting his hair? Anyone else remember this?

HA! LOVE to see that quote! Thanks for reminding me... I did hear about that, but never seen the original document.

:)

[ohpkirk]

Re: Period image of a female cigarette smoker?

Trying to keep this on-topic... Does anyone have a picture proveable to before or during the period of ANY CIGARETTE smokers? Never seen one other than this one.

Photographic evidence? I'm sure there are some out there private collections, especially, as Mr. Machingo noted, in states/territories with a large Hispanic population.

There are written accounts of antebellum San Antonio of women and young girls rolling and smoking corn husk cigarillos from the 1840s and 50s. I believe Alfred Olmsted mentions it in his book written in 1852.

[Johnny Lloyd]

Re: Period image of a female cigarette smoker?

Seems to me that people were smoking hand rolled cigarettes, if any, during the time period. "Bull Durham" was a pouch of tobacco one rolled into papers oneself and this brand dates from about 1864-1865.

The only manufacturers of retail cigarettes in the 1850s (post Crimean War) that I can find research evidence of were Phillip Morris and "Sweet Threes" by Robert Gloag, both in London. No telling if they made it over the Atlantic in imports, though. If they did, I can't find evidence of it. It is possible, though.

[ohpkirk]

Re: Period image of a female cigarette smoker?

Remember to soak and scrape your corn husks if you want to try to roll your own...the thinner the husk, the better.

[Mrs Paul L Muller]

Re: Period image of a female cigarette smoker?

Lola is my kind of woman ... just scandalous enough to be remembered in history.