The History of Tobacco Part II
by Gene Borio
The Eighteenth Century--Snuff holds sway
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• ENGLAND: George III's wife known as "Snuffy
Charlotte"
• FRANCE: Napoleon said to have used 7 lb. of snuff per
month
• 1700: RUSSIA: Peter the Great smokes and repeals bans
on smoking.(TSW)
• 1701: MEDICINE: Nicholas Andryde Boisregard warns that
young people taking too much tobacco have trembling, unsteady
hands, staggering feet and suffer a withering of "their
noble parts."
• 1705: VIRGINIA Assembly passes a law legalizing lifelong
slavery. . . . all servants imported and brought into this
country, by sea or land, who were not christians in their native
country . . . shall be . . . slaves, and as such be here bought
and sold notwithstanding a conversion to christianity
afterwards."
• 1713: Inspection regulations passed to keep up standards
of Virginia leaf exports (not effective until 1730). (ATS)
• 1724: Pope Benedict XIII learns to smoke and repeals bans
on smoking.(TSW)
• 1727: ECONOMY: "Tobacco notes" attesting to
quality and quantity of one's tobacco kept in public warehouses
are authorized as legal tender in Virginia. Used as units of
monetary exchange throughout 18th Century.
• 1730: LEGISLATION: Virginia Inspection Acts come into
effect, standardizing and regulating tobacco sales and exports to
prevent the export of "trash tobacco"--shipments
diluted with leaves and household sweepings, which were debasing
the value of Virginia tobacco. Inspection warehouses were
empowered to verify weight and kind and kind of tobacco.
• 1730: VIRGINIA: BUSINESS: First American tobacco factories
begun in VirginiaŃsmall snuff mills
• 1747: LEGISLATION: Maryland passes its own Maryland
Inspection Act to control quality of exports.
• 1750: RHODE ISLAND BUSINESS: Gilbert Stuart builds snuff
mill in Rhode Island, ships his products in dried animal bladders
• 1758: LEGISLATION: Virginia Assembly passes wildly
unpopular "Two Penny Act," forbidding payment in
percentage of tobacco crop to some public officials, such as
clergy. The crop was small at this period, making tobacco a
seller's market. The law mandating a regular salary for these
officials severely cut the clergy's real income.
• 1753: SWEDEN: Swedish Botanist Carolus Linnaeus names the
plant genus, nicotiana. and describes two species, nicotiana
rustica. and nicotiana tabacum."
• 1760: BUSINESS: Pierre Lorillard establishes a
"manufactory" in New York City for processing pipe
tobacco, cigars, and snuff. P. Lorillard is the oldest tobacco
company in the US.
• 1761: ENGLAND: John Hill performs perhaps first clinical
study of tobacco effects, warns snuff users they are vulnerable
to cancers of the nose.
• 1761: ENGLAND: Dr. Percival Pott notes incidence of cancer
of the scrotum among chimneysweeps, theorizing a connection
between cancer and exposure to soot.
• 1762: General Israel Putnam introduces cigar-smoking to
the US. After a British campaign in Cuba, "Old Put"
returns with three donkey-loads of Havana cigars; introduces the
customers of his Connecticut brewery and tavern to cigar smoking
(BD)
• 1763: Patrick Henry argues a tobacco case.The clergy had
been paid in tobacco until a late 1750s Virginia law which
decreed they should be paid in currency at the rate of 2 cent/lb,
when tobacco was selling for 6 cents/lb. The law was vetoed by
the Crown, but was still sometimes adhered to in Virginia, and
some clergy sued their parishes. Henry defended one such parish
(Hanover County) in court. He berated England's interference in
domestic matters, and convinced the jury to give the
plaintiff/clergyman only one penny in damages.
• 1771-12-17: FRANCE: French official is condemned to be
hanged for admitting foreign tobacco into the country.
• 1776: AMERICAN REVOLUTION Along "Tobacco Coast"
(the Chesapeake), the Revolutionary War was variously known as
"The Tobacco War." Growers had found themselves
perpetually in debt to British merchants; by 1776, growers owed
the mercantile houses millions of pounds. British tobacco taxes
are a further grievance. Tobacco helps finance the Revolution by
serving as collateral for loans from France.
• 1780-1781: VIRGINIA: "TOBACCO WAR" waged by Lord
Cornwallis to destroy basis of America's credit abroad (ATS)
• 1781: Thomas Jefferson suggests tobacco cultivation in the
"western country on the Mississippi." (ATS)
• 1788: BUSINESS: Spanish NEW ORLEANS opened for export of
tobacco by Americans in Mississippi valley. (ATS)
• 1789-1799: FRENCH REVOLUTION French masses begin to take
to the cigarito, as the form of tobacco use least like the
aristocratic snuff.
• 1791: HEALTH: ENGLAND: London physician John Hill reports
cases in which use of snuff caused nasal cancers
• 1794: The U.S Congress passes its first tax on tobacco.
The tax of 8 cents applies only to snuff, not the more plebian
chewing or smoking tobacco. The tax is 60% of snuff's usual
selling price.
• 1795: Sammuel Thomas von Soemmering of Maine reports on
cancers of the lip in pipe smokers
• 1798. Famed physician Benjamin Rush writes on the medical
dangers of tobacco and claims that smoking or chewing tobacco
leads to drunkenness.
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The Nineteenth Century--The Age of the Cigar
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• 1800: CANADA: Tobacco begins being commercially grown.
• 1805: LEWIS AND CLARK explore Northwest, using gifts of
tobacco as "life insurance."
• 1810: CONNECTICUT: Cuban cigar-roller brought to Suffield
to train local workers. (ATS)
• 1820: American traders open the Santa Fe trail, find
ladies of that city smoking "seegaritos." (ATS)
• 1826: ENGLAND is importing 26 pounds of cigars a year. The
cigar becomes so popular that within four years, England will be
importing 250,000 pounds of cigars a year.
• 1826: MEDICINE: The purified form of the nicotine compound
is obtained
• 1828: GERMANY: Heidelberg students Ludwig Reimann and
Wilhelm Heinrich Posselt write exhaustive dissertations on the
pharmacology of nicotine, concluding it is a "dangerous
poison."
• 1830s: First organized anti-tobacco movement in US begins
as adjunct to the temperance movement. Tobacco use is considered
to dry out the mouth, "creating a morbid or diseased
thirst" which only liquor could quench..
• 1830: PRUSSIA: Prussian Government enacts a law that
cigars , in public, be smoked in a sort of wire-mesh contraption
designed to prevent sparks setting fire to ladies'
"crinolines" and hoop skirts. (BD)
• 1832: AGRICULTURE: TUCK patents curing method for Virginia
leaf.
• 1839: AGRICULTURE: NORTH CAROLINA: SLADE
"yallercure" presages flue-cured Bright tobacco.
Charcoal used in flue-curing for the first time in North
Carolina. Not only cheaper, its intense heat turns the thinner,
low-nicotine Piedmont leaf a brilliant golden color. This results
in the classic American "Bright leaf" variety, which is
so mild it virtually invites a smoker to inhale it.(RK), (ATS)
• 1836: USA: Samuel Green of the New England Almanack and
Farmers Friend writes that tobacco is an insectide, a poison, a
fillthy habit, and can kill a man. (LB)
• 1842: Opium War. Treaty of Nanjing forces China to accept
opium from British traders
• 1843: FRANCE: SEITA monopoly begins manufacture of
cigarettes.
• 1843: MEDICINE: The correct molecular formula of nicotine
is established
• 1845: ART: Prosper Merimee's novel, Carmen, about a
cigarette girl in an Andalusian factory, is published
• 1846-1848: MEXICAN WAR US soldiers bring back a taste for
the darker, richer tobacco favored in Latin countries, leading to
an explosive increase in the use of the cigar.
• 1847: ENGLAND: Philip Morris opens shop; sells hand-rolled
Turkish cigarettes.
• 1849: BUSINESS: J.E. Liggett and Brother is established in
St. Louis, Mo., by John Edmund Liggett
• 1852:Washington Duke, a young tobacco farmer, builds a
modest, two-story home near Durham, NC, for himself and his new
bride. The house, and the log structure which served as a
"tobacco factory" after the Civil War may still be seen
at the Duke Homestead Museum.
• 1852: Matches are introduced, making smoking more
convenient.
• 1853-1856: EUROPE: CRIMEAN WAR British soldiers learn how
cheap and convenient the cigarettes ("Papirossi") used
by their Turkish allies are, and bring the practise back to
England.
• 1854: ENGLAND: BUSINESS: London tobacconist Philip Morris
begins making his own cigarettes.
• 1856-1857: ENGLAND: A running debate among readers runs in
the British medical journal, Lancet. The argument runs as much
along moral as medical lines, with little substantiation.(RK)
• 1857: BUSINESS: James Buchanan "Buck" Duke is
born to Washington "Wash" Duke, an independent farmer
who hated the plantation class, opposed slavery, and raised food
and a little tobacco.
• 1859: Reverend George Trask publishes tract "Thoughts
and stories for American Lads: Uncle Toby's anti-tobacco advice
to his nephew Billy Bruce". He writes, "Physicians tell
us that twenty thousand or more in our own land are killed by
[tobacco] every year (LB)
• 1860: The Census for Virginia and North Carolina list 348
tobacco factories, virtually all producing chewing tobacco. Only
6 list smoking tobacco as a side-product (which is manufactured
from scraps left over from plug production).
• 1860: BUSINESS: Manufactured cigarettes appear. A popular
early brand is Bull Durham.
• 1860: BUSINESS: MARKETING: Lorillard wraps $100 bills at
random in packages of cigarette tobacco named
"Century," in order to celebrate the hundredth
anniversary of the firm (BD)
• 1861-1865: USA: THE CIVIL WAR: Tobacco is given with
rations by both North and South; many Northerners are introduced
to tobacco this way. During Sherman's march, Union soldiers now
attracted to the mild, sweet "bright" tobacco of the
South, raided warehouses--including Washington Duke's--for some
chew on the way home. Some bright made it all the way back.
Bright tobacco becomes the rage in the North.
• 1862: First federal USA tax on tobacco; instituted to help
pay for the Civil War, yields about three million dollars.(TSW)
• 1863: SUMATRA: Nienhuys creates Indonesian tobacco
industry Dutch businessman Jacobus Nienhuys travels to Sumatra
seeking to buy tobacco, but finds poor growing and production
facilities; his efforts to rectify the situation are credited
with establishing the indonesian tobacco industry.
• 1863: US Mandates Cigar Boxes. Congress passes a law
calling for manufacturers to create cigar boxes on which IRS
agents can paste Civil War excise tax stamps. The beginning of
"cigar box art."
• 1864: AGRICULTURE: WHITE BURLEY first cultivated in Ohio
Valley; highly absorbent new leaf proves ideal for sweetened
chewing tobacco.
• 1864: BUSINESS: 1st American cigarette factory opens and
produces almost 20 million cigarettes.
• 1864: First tax levied on cigarettes.
• 1865-70: NEW YORK CITY: Demand for exotic Turkish
cigarettes grows in New York City; skilled European rollers
imported by New York tobacco shops. (ATS)
• 1868: UK: Parliament passes the Railway Bill of 1868,
which mandates smoke-free cars to prevent injury to non-smokers.
• 1873: BUSINESS: Philip Morris dies. (Yes, that Philip
Morris)
• 1873: Myers Brothers and Co. markets "Love"
tobacco with them of North-South Civil War reconcilliation.
• 1874: BUSINESS: Washington Duke, with his sons Benjamin N.
Duke and James Buchanan Duke, builds his first tobacco factory
• 1875: BUSINESS: Allen and Ginter offer a reward of $75,000
for cigarette rolling machine. (LB)
• 1875: BUSINESS: R. J. Reynolds founds R.J. Reynolds
Tobacco Company to produce chewing tobacco, soon producing brands
like Brown's Mule, Golden Rain, Dixie's Delight, Yellow Rose,
Purity.
• 1875: BUSINESS: Richmond, VA: Allen & Ginter cigarette
brands ("Richmond Straight Cut No. 1," "Pet")
begin using picture cards to stiffen the pack and give the buyer
a premium. Some themes: "Fifty Scenes of Perilous
Occupations," "Flags of All Nations," boxers,
actresses, famous battles, etc. The cards are a huge hit.(RK)
• 1875: ART: Georges Bizet's opera, Carmen, based on
Merimee's novel about a cigarette girl in an Andalusian factory,
opens.
• 1876: Benson & Hedges receives its first royal warrant
from Edward VII, Prince of Wales.
• 1878: BUSINESS: J.E. Liggett & Brother incorporates as
Liggett & Myers Company. By 1885 Liggett is world's largest
plug tobacco manufacturer; doesn't make cigarettes until the
1890's
• 1878: BUSINESS: Trading cards and coupons begin being
widely used in cigarette packs.
• c.1880s: USA: Women's Christian Temperance Movement
publishes a "Leaflet for Mothers' Meetings" titled
"Narcotics", by Lida B. Ingalls. Discusses evils of
tobacco, especially cigarettes. Cigarettes are "doing more
to-day to undermine the constitution of our young men and boys
than any other one evil" (p. 7). (LB)
• c.1880s: ADVERTISING: Improvements in transportation,
manufacturing volume, and packaging lead to the ability to sell
the same branded product nationwide. What can be sold nationwide
can and must be advertised nationwide. Advertising agencies
sprout like wildflowers. The most advertised product throughout
most of the 19th century: elixirs and patent medicines of the
"cancer cure" variety.
• c.1880s: ENGLAND: BUSINESS: Mssrs. Richard Benson and
William Hedges open a tobacconist shop near Philip Morris in
London.(RK)
• 1880: Bonsack machine granted first cigarette machine
patent
• 1881: BUSINESS James Buchanan ("Buck") Duke
enters the manufacturered cigarette business, moving 125 Russian
Jewish immigrants to Durham, NC. First cigarette: Duke of Durham
brand. Duke's factory produces 9.8 million cigarettes, 1.5 % of
the total market.
• 1883: BUSINESS: Oscar Hammerstien receives patent on cigar
rolling machine.(TSW)
• 1884: BUSINESS: Duke heads to New York City to take his
tobacco business national and form a cartel that eventually
becomes the American Tobacco Co. Duke buys 2 Bonsack machines.,
getting one of them to produce 120,000 cigarettes in 10 hours by
the end of the year. In this year Duke produces 744 million
cigarettes, more than the national total in 1883. Duke's airtight
contracts with Bonsack allow him to undersell all competitors.
• 1886: USA Patent received for machine to manufacture plug
tobacco. (LB)
• 1886: Tampa, FL: Don Vicente Martinez Ybor opens his first
cigar factory. Others follow. Within a few years, Ybor city will
become the cigar capital of the US.
• 1887: PALESTINE: A traveler reports that the Arabs of the
Syrian Desert get giddy and headaches from a few whiffs of
tobacco. They smoke a local plant 'Hyoscyamus'. (LB)
• 1887: USA: Advice from the cigar and tobacco price list of
M. Breitweiser and Brothers of Buffalo, Item #5 -- "If you
think smoking injurious to your health, stop smoking in the
morning". (LB)
• 1887: USA: Two men held pipe smoking contest that lasted
one and a half hours. Victory was declared when one man filled
his pipe for the tenth time, his oppenent did not. (LB)
• 1887: His contracts with Bonsack unknown to his
competitors, Buck Duke slashes prices, sparking a price war he
knew he'd win.
• 1889: SCIENCE: Nicotine and nerve cells reported on.
Langley and Dickinson publish landmark studies on the effects of
nicotine on the ganglia; they hypothesize that there are
receptors and transmitters that respond to stimulation by
specific chemicals. (RK)
• 1889: USA: BUSINESS: Buck Duke is spending $800,000
marketing his cigarettes. (LB)
• 1889-04-23: BUSINESS: The five leading cigarette firms,
including W. Duke Sons & Company, form the American Tobacco
Company. It's president is Buck Duke.
• c.1890s: USA: Women's Christian Temperance Movement
publishes "Narcotics", by E. B. Ingalls. Pamphlet
discusses evils of numerous drugs, tobacco, cocaine, ginger,
hashish, and headache medicines. Offers 16 suggestions to
workers. (LB)
• 1890: Peak of chewing tobacco consumption in V. S., three
pounds per capita. (ATS)
• 1890: "Tobacco" appears in the US Pharmacopoeia,
an official government listing of drugs.
• 1890s: RESEARCH: Pure nicotine is first synthesized.
• 1890: 26 states and territories have outlawed the sale of
cigarettes to minors (age of a "minor" in a particulary
state could be anything from 14-24.)
• 1890: BUSINESS: Dukes establish the American Tobacco
Company, which will soon monopolize the entire US tobacco
industry. ATC will be dissolved in Anti-Trust action in 1911.
• 1890: LITERATURE: My Lady Nicotine, Sir James Barrie,
London
• 1892: POLITICS: Reformers petition Congress to prohibit
the manufacture, importation and sale of cigarettes. The Senate
Committee on Epidemic Diseases, while agreeing that cigarettes
are a public health hazard, finds that only the states have the
authority to act. The committee urges the petitioners to seek
redress from state legislatures.
• 1893: The state of Washington bans the sale and use of
cigarettes.
• 1894: BUSINESS: By now, Philip Morris has passed from the
troubled Morris family, and is controlled by the Thompson family
(RK).
• 1894: BUSINESS: Brown & Williamson formed as a
partnership in Winston-Salem, making mostly plug, snuff and pipe
tobacco. (RK).
• 1898: SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR: Congress raises taxes on
cigarettes 200%
• 1898: IN COURT: Tennessee Supreme Court upholds a total
ban on cigarettes, ruling they are "not legitimate articles
of commerce, because wholly noxious and deleterious to health.
Their use is always harmful."
• 1899: Lucy Payne Gaston, who claims that young men who
smoke develop a distinguishable "cigarette face,"
founds the Chicago Anti-Cigarette League, which grows by 1911 to
the Anti-Cigarette League of America, and by 1919 to the
Anti-Cigarette League of the World.
• 1899: The Senate Finance Committee, in secret session,
rolls back the wartime excise tax on cigarettes.(RK)
• 1899: BUSINESS: Liggett & Myers taken into Duke's
Tobacco Trust. Duke has finally won the Bull Durham brand of
chew.
• 1899: BUSINESS: RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company incorporates..
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