THE CIGARETTE'S CENTENARY

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 287, 3 December 1932, Page 8

THE CIGARETTE'S CENTENARY

In a few weeks the cigarette industry will be celebrating—how it has not yet disclosed —the hundredth anniversary of the cigarette, which, like many another invention, came to birth as the result of an unfortunate accident (says the London "Observer" of October 23). There have been many legendary accounts of how the cigarette came to be invented, but probably the most likely is that which gives the credit for it to ?.n Egyptian soldier who, in the campaign against the Turks o'f 1832, was confronted by the distressing spectacle of a varavan load of choice tobacco alongside a caravan load of pipes that had been shattered beyond repair. The ingenious Egyptian, not wishing to see so much good tobacco going to waste, experimented by stuffing some of it into an india-paper cartridge case, applying a light, and taking a deep breath. The result was the first, if somewhat elementary, cigarette. Almost thirty years after the invention of the primitive cigarette—in 1861 to be exact —a Greek gentleman and formerly a captain in the Russian Army, Mr. John Theodoridi, opened the first cigarette shop in London, in Leicester Square. Four years before this, however, another Greek tobacco merchant had opened in the same neighbourhood a shop where Russians, Greeks and Spaniards, as well as Englishmen who had contracted the cigarette-smoking in the Crimea, could procure specially cut tobacco and papers which could be manipulated into cigarettes. Mr. Theo--' doridi's enterprise was on a much grander scale, for he employed no fewer than four table workers who turned out the cigarettes ready made. Turkish tobacco was used, and all the cigarettes were fitted —as they are in Russia to-day—with cardboard mouthpieces. Mr. Theodoridi, too, had 'an eye for publicity, and was wise enough to give his brands such fancy names as "The Tannon," "The Rifle," "The Zetland" and "The Opera." Four years later he was followed by another enterprising Greek, Mr. T. Auramachi, who worked sad havoc with Mr. Theodoridi's fancy-named specialities by producing one named "The Cambridge." Mr. Theodoridi retaliated with "The Oxford," but already the Light Blues had won the day.

Once the cigarette "boom" set in among the poorer classes attempts were at once made to produce cigarettes at "dirt cheap" prices. The description was literally only too true, and for many years the medical profession and welfare workers spent much time in combating- what was known as the "dust cigarette." This was made by closing one end of the paper container, filling it with tobacco dust, and sealing the other end by means of a cardboard mouthpiece stuffed with cotton wool. These were sold at twenty-five for sixpence, and were mostly manufactured by children working under "sweated labour" conditions.

In the late 'seventies came the advent of the Virginia cigarette from America, which in a few years' time had reduced their English rivals to a parlous state—not because of the superiority of their tobacco, but because of the boldness with which they were advertised in the Press. It is an interesting fact, by the way, that the popularity of the Egyptian cigarette, which set in about this time, was the result not of any industry on the part of the Egyptians, but on the part of British officers in the Egyptian Army of Occupation, who were unable to get fresh supplies from home, and forced the Egyptians to manufacture cigarettes for them.

English cigarettes achieved pre-eminence all over the world even as early as the late 'sixties. This was probably largely due to the fact that a Greek' (they were all Greeks in the industry then) named A. Zicaliotti founded in Liverpool in 1809 a school for women cigarette makers, thus ousting many hundreds of foreign cigarette makers who had flocked to England from abroad. From such haphazard beginnings the cigarette industry in England has established itself, so that now almost 30.000,000.000 cigarettes arc smoked in Britain annually, manufactured by machines which are capable of turning them out at the rate of 1350 a minute.