Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 5:

Tobacco was still the symbol of good-fellowship. Winstanley, who was an enemy of what he called "this Heathenish Weed," and who thought the "folly" of smoking might never have spread so much if stringent "means of prevention" had been exercised, yet had to declare in 1660 that "Tobacco it self is by few taken now as medicinal, it is grown a good-fellow, and fallen from a Physician to a Complement. 'He's no good-fellow that's without ... burnt Pipes, Tobacco, and his Tinder-Box.'"

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

Other significant early tobacconists' signs were "Sir Walter Raleigh," "The Virginian" and "The Tobacco Roll." "Sir Walter," as the reputed introducer of tobacco, was naturally chosen as a sign, and his portrait adorns several shop-bills in the Banks Collection. The American Indians, represented under the figure of "The Virginian," and the negroes were hopelessly confused by the early tobacconists, with results which were sometimes surprising from an ethnological point of view. As the first tobacco imported into this country came from Virginia, a supposed "Virginian" was naturally adopted as a tobacco-seller's sign at an early date. An "Indian" or a "Negro" or a figure which was a combination of both, was commonly represented wearing a kilt or a girdle of tobacco leaves, a feathered head-dress, and smoking a pipe. A tobacco-paper, dating from about the time of Queen Anne, bears rudely engraved the figure of a negro smoking, and holding a roll of tobacco in his hand. Above his head is a crown; behind are two ships in full sail, with the sun just appearing from the right-hand corner above. The foreground shows four little black boys planting and packing tobacco, and below them is the name of the ingenious tradesman-"John Winkley, Tobacconist, near ye Bridge, in the Burrough, Southwark." Sixty years or so ago a wooden figure, representing a negro with a gilt loin-cloth and band with feathered head, and sometimes with a tobacco roll, was still a frequent ornament of tobacconists' shops.

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