Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

Sir G.W. Forrest, in his book on "The Indian Mutiny," tells how at the siege of Lucknow, as the month of August advanced, "the tea and sugar, except a small store kept for invalids, were exhausted. The tobacco also was gone, and Europeans and natives suffered greatly from the want of it. The soldiers yearned for a pipe after a hard day's work, and smoked dry leaves as the only substitute they could obtain." Mr. L.E.R. Rees in his diary of the same siege noted—"I have given up smoking tobacco, and have taken to tea-leaves and neem-leaves, and guava fruit-leaves instead, which the poor soldiers are also constantly using." The neem-tree is better known, perhaps, as the margosa. It yields a bitter oil, and is supposed to possess febrifugal properties.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 13:

In the record of an early libel action brought in the court of the Archdeacon of Essex, some domestic scenes of 1621 are vividly represented. We need not trouble about the libel action, but two of the dramatis personæ were a certain George Thresher, who sold beer and tobacco at his "shopp in Romford," and a good friend and customer of his named Elizabeth Savage, who, sad to say, was described as much given to "stronge drincke and tobacco." In the course of the trial, on June 8, 1621, Mistress Savage had to tell her tale, part of which is reported as follows:

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