NURSES’ SMOKEROOMS

Evening Star, Issue 20139, 2 April 1929, Page 6

NURSES’ SMOKEROOMS

Tu far-off days there used to be a. rule in many, if not all, public schools that masters should never be seen smoking in the presence of boys. Head masters were apt to be petulant at their inability to extend this rule to lathers, who in'their opinion undid all the good that this self-denying ordinance brought about in term time by flaunting their pipes and cigars in front ot their sons in the holidays. Times have indeed changed, for we now hear of a Manchester institution where two rooms are to be converted into nurses’ smokerooms in order that tho nurses may have no temptation to smoke in their bedrooms (says the London ‘ Daily Telegraph’). It is little use trying to withstand the march of progress. Instead of deriving their daughters the right to smoke in their own bedrooms, the parents of to-day present them with ash trays in the \ain hope that they will not litter the floor with ash and ends. Not only is the non-smoker as rare a bird a«7 iho bittern, but the places whore tobacco smoke is taboo are increasingly rare. Perhaps in a tew generations architects will design a small sanctuary in large country bouses to be known as the “ non-smoking room,” bub at .present the man or woman whose nostrils are offended by the odour of tobacco has a very limited lauge of refuges. Churches, art galleries, museums, dynamite factories, and kindergarten classrooms are still immune, but there arc many who fee! the restrictions in these places so irksome that they refuse to visit, them. It .is the almost universal practice to smoke in bed and bath, at breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner, on the way to work, at work, and on the way home. Nurses who are condemned to smoke only in their smokeroom will certainly make up for lost tune whenever they are free to seek its solace. Have they not the valid excuse that tobacco is the moslj efficient of germ killers and the most soothing and harmless cure for overwrought nerves?