The ILN supplement on Manchester carried an article under the title The Fragrant Weed which celebrated 60 years of cigarette smoking in this country.
According to the ILN, the exotic Laurence Oliphant, well known journalist, traveller & novelist ‘stood sponsor’ for the introduction of cigarette smoking in this country when (around 1850) he became the first person ‘of note’ to smoke, in public & in London, the ‘slender paper covered little rolls of tobacco.’
Until then smoking was regarded as vicious & vulgar. Indeed Charles Greville was wont to reprimand younger men whom he found smoking in the region of St James’s: “Do you wish to be taken as an omnibus conductor?”
The Muratti cigarette business was established in Manchester in 1885. Their finest products, of Turkish tobacco, were made by hand since the ‘flavour [is] so delicate [it] would lose much of its subtle charm & aroma if treated by machine’.
To judge by the photographs in the ILN the workers were all women. Not all lines were made by hand however – inferior Virginia cigarettes were made with machines – 200 lines in all.
One hundred and sixty years later smoking is pretty much back to being regarded as vicious & vulgar in this country.
