Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 10:

Sir G.W. Forrest, in his book on "The Indian Mutiny," tells how at the siege of Lucknow, as the month of August advanced, "the tea and sugar, except a small store kept for invalids, were exhausted. The tobacco also was gone, and Europeans and natives suffered greatly from the want of it. The soldiers yearned for a pipe after a hard day's work, and smoked dry leaves as the only substitute they could obtain." Mr. L.E.R. Rees in his diary of the same siege noted—"I have given up smoking tobacco, and have taken to tea-leaves and neem-leaves, and guava fruit-leaves instead, which the poor soldiers are also constantly using." The neem-tree is better known, perhaps, as the margosa. It yields a bitter oil, and is supposed to possess febrifugal properties.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 4:

It seems likely that Richard Cromwell was a smoker. In 1689, long after he had retired into private life and had ample leisure for blowing clouds, he sent to a friend a "Boxe of tobacco," which was described as "A.J. Bod (den's) ... best Virginnea." In a letter to his daughter Elizabeth, dated 21 January 1705, there is a reference to this same dealer, whom he describes as "Adam Bodden, Bacconist in George Yard, Lumber [Lombard] Street." The allusion is worth noting as a very early instance of the colloquial trick of abbreviation familiar in later days in such forms as "baccy" and "bacca" and their compounds.

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