Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1897 — Can This Be True? [ARTICLE]

Can This Be True?

Not many years ago in New England God-fearing women smoked and were not ashamed. Jorevin de Rochefort, who traveled in England in the seventeenth century, wrote as follows; “The supper being finished, they set on the table half a dozen pipes and a packet of tobacco for smoking, which is a general custom, as well among women as men. It is a custom in England that when the children went to school they carried in their satchel with their books a pipe of tobacco, which their mother took care to fill early in the morning, it serving them instead of a breakfast, and that,at the accustomed hour everyone laid aside his book to light his pipe, the master smoking with them, and teaching them how to hold their pipes and draw in the tobacco.” And others tell us that at the same period it was the custom to offer tobacco pipes to women of high or low degree in the theater. Did women smoke on aecoaint of the reason given in King James’ “Counterblast to Tobacco?” Moreover, which is a great iniquitie, and against all humauitie, the husband shall not be ashamed to reduce thereby his delicate, wholesome) and clean comiplexloned wife to that extremitie, that either sihee.-must also corrupt her sweete or else resolve to live in a peiipetUal stinking torment.”~Boston Journal.