WHEN LADIES SMOKED PIPES.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 7752, 22 July 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

WHEN LADIES SMOKED PIPES.

IT BEGAN IN THE IIEIGN OF QUEEN BESS. Some enterprising person has just written a history of smoking; so now wo shall all ho seeing visions of courtiers and -stately dames in just the correct period and setting as we puff at oqr pipes in leisure hours. Of course, it all began with Sir Walter Raleigh; w r e do not need to bo told that. He set the fashion, and even persuaded Queen Bess to try the latest craze, for Sir Walter was rather a dog, and had a way with the ladies. As it happened, the Queen did not take to it; she thought it tasted horrid, and it miado her feel sick. But she liked to seo her 1-adies-iniwaiting with a pipe between their pretty teeth, so smoking prospered in her reign. Apothecaries were the men to buy tobacco from, and some of them took pupils to whom they taught tho “slights,” as they termed it, of the pipe. That is to say. they showed them how to blow smoke through their noses, how to make rings, and otherwise distinguish themselves Every knut carried a sumptuous smoking outfit, -sometimes-of gold silver, containing a tobacco box, tongs for lifting live coals, a Indio for snuff, a priming iron, and a good Selection of pines. SPECIAL NON-SMOKERS FOR WOMEN However, James I. put his foot down when ho cajne to the throne, and forbade the use of tobacco, “ the dalaeke stinking fume” of which he( compared to the smoke of the bottomless pit! Although he put it so crudely, so that must have got people’s hacks up ami , made n lot of ill-feeling, his ivord was taw. There was nothing for his poor subjects to do but to knock off toljacco and take to snuff instead. It was only in the nineteenth century that smoking again became fashionable. Someone brought over a bo?, of cigars to England from Spain and that started things going; though for some years it was considered very daring to bo seen with a cigar. Matters moved quickly alter that. In 1859 the first wooden p : pe appeared, to be followed by tho cigarette in 1860. This last was a boon to women, who naturally had felt a little shy i/r the pipe and the cigar. At the present day cigarette smoking is extreme'y popular with both sexes nil over the civilised world. Indeed, in Russia you will see railway carriages marked’ “For ladies wild do not smoke.”