SMOKED IN PUBLIC.

Mataura Ensign, 29 December 1911, Page 6

SMOKED IN PUBLIC.

DARING AMERICAN WOMAN. United States newspapers give sensational prominence to an item of "news" which will particularly interest Englishwomen who, while visiting that country, have innocently indulged their passion for a cigarette in hotels or restaurants. No matter how distinguished their lineage might be the chief waiters have invariably approached them before they had time to enjoy more than half a dozen whiffs iand sternly announced that cigarette smoking by women in public was absolutely prohibited. For the first time in the history of the Republic a distinguished American woman, Mrs Craig Biddle, defied the national convention and calmly lit a cigarette in the restaurant of the Bellevue Stratford Hotel at Philadelphia. Mrs Biddle, who we are informed is "a Biddle of the Biddies," was accompanied by her millionaire husband when she inaugurated the revolt against the hitherto inviolate law agains feminine smoking in fashionable resorts. The hotel employees gazed at her aghast, but none ventured to protest. She acquired the habit, she alleged, in London society and was determinedl to transplant it to the United States.