Ladies Up In Smoke; Or, Gentlemen, Smoke At Your Own Risk. Godey's 1863

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
smoking crop.jpg

Pre-war Godey's image illustrating either the foolishness of men smoking tobacco or the danger they stood in, courting ladies' disapproval. Or both.

Not all of us were smitten by tobacco, one of our first cash crops, and its inevitable usage. Topping that list would have been enslaved laborers toiling for centuries in heat, bringing to harvest a crop so valuable it served as money in a coin starved colony.

Next on the list seems to be ladies, for whom tobacco use in any form was so forbidden, when it was discovered some few women indulged in snuff they were considered freaks. Never knew smoking tobacco by men to have been frowned upon, though, new to me! With ladies disapproving of the practice in male circles, it's a little astonishing the whole thing lasted centuries until we lit up, too. ( Disclaimer here would be how much I do not know about tobacco and Native American use- it's a lot. )

smoking text.jpg

First, a mild complaint in a women's magazine

Then the first broadside
smoking ladies.jpg


Godey's also published a pattern for a ' smoking hat '. Seems to me part of a devious plot- if men had to smoke, wear this silly thing on your head, too. With tassel. :angel:

smoking cap godeys 1849.jpg
 
View attachment 205776
Pre-war Godey's image illustrating either the foolishness of men smoking tobacco or the danger they stood in, courting ladies' disapproval. Or both.

Not all of us were smitten by tobacco, one of our first cash crops, and its inevitable usage. Topping that list would have been enslaved laborers toiling for centuries in heat, bringing to harvest a crop so valuable it served as money in a coin starved colony.

Next on the list seems to be ladies, for whom tobacco use in any form was so forbidden, when it was discovered some few women indulged in snuff they were considered freaks. Never knew smoking tobacco by men to have been frowned upon, though, new to me! With ladies disapproving of the practice in male circles, it's a little astonishing the whole thing lasted centuries until we lit up, too. ( Disclaimer here would be how much I do not know about tobacco and Native American use- it's a lot. )

View attachment 205778
First, a mild complaint in a women's magazine

Then the first broadside
View attachment 205777

Godey's also published a pattern for a ' smoking hat '. Seems to me part of a devious plot- if men had to smoke, wear this silly thing on your head, too. With tassel. :angel:

View attachment 205775
Annie, I was a life-long cigar smoker until I quit a few years ago. I smoked cigarettes when I was young and I quit cold turkey in my 30's. Cigars (good cigars, no drugstore cigars), on the other hand, held me in thrall until my 60's and I still would love to have one right now. However, if I had to wear the hat - no way!
 
Smoke really triggers my allergies, so I've actually never once tried smoking.

As many a bummer noted, the Southern farm women loved their tobacco -- pipes and chews most of all.
I'm pretty sure my ancestor in my avatar--the daughter of a Civil War veteran and a lifelong resident of rural North Carolina--has a chaw of tobacco in her mouth. :smoke:
 
Annie, I was a life-long cigar smoker until I quit a few years ago. I smoked cigarettes when I was young and I quit cold turkey in my 30's. Cigars (good cigars, no drugstore cigars), on the other hand, held me in thrall until my 60's and I still would love to have one right now. However, if I had to wear the hat - no way!
:rofl:
 
Annie, I was a life-long cigar smoker until I quit a few years ago. I smoked cigarettes when I was young and I quit cold turkey in my 30's. Cigars (good cigars, no drugstore cigars), on the other hand, held me in thrall until my 60's and I still would love to have one right now. However, if I had to wear the hat - no way!


No, no, the hat is mandatory. I can see why you quit. :angel:

Cigar smoke doesn't bother me- in fact it must be some forgotten childhood association because it seems nostalgic. Dad didn't smoke but remember the sight of a well-chewed cigar end in various hands, must have been friends or relatives. And it's funny. In 2018 there's no gender gap with smoking cigarettes but a woman with a cigar is still considered well, unfeminine.
 
It transpires not all ' ladies ' loathed smoking- tails were turned quite a bit. There were two quite unfortunate fashion faux pas phases called ' Bloomer '. The first, pre-war, more frivolous phase tended towards some frills and lace while practicing masculine past-times. Smoking for instance. ( ' Bloomers 'second phase was that severe, utilitarian garb worn by quite a few feminist physicians , a whole 'nother story ) The entire saga was called " The Dress Reform Movement " but involved two, different time frames. Both laid claim to feminist ideology, only one dedicated itself to replicating male social life. That was the first, hence smoking.

duel smoking woman.jpg

It's a romantic image not much admired- here's the lampooned image.

female bloomers smoking.jpg


Dr. Cox, a decade or so later, even 150 years ago already dedicated to anti smoking for men or women.
dress reform dr cox lg.jpg
 
I was a cigarette and cigar smoker for around twenty years and when I was on the dating scene, I had so many of my girlfriends tell me to quit smoking but I just ignored them being the slave to nicotine that I was. I quit smoking a couple of years after I got married back in 2004 and my wife was much happier with me after making that decision. I'll still use a pinch of smokeless tobacco when I'm doing something outdoors every now and then but my days of nicotine stained fingers and smelling like furniture after a house fire are over.
 
Tobacco use was almost ubiquitous among Southern Women of all classes. "The Social Dip" where ladies passed snuff around & dipped a chewed twig used to apply it to their gums was a universal activity. Northern soldiers were gobsmacked to see ladies in a fine carriage squirting tobacco juice as they passed by. A small pipe was in constant use from a very early age by both sexes.

americancivilwarforum.com> the-social-dip-southern-women-loved-their-snuff.

is a posting I wrote that covers Southern women's love of tobacco during the CW era.
 
Tobacco use was almost ubiquitous among Southern Women of all classes. "The Social Dip" where ladies passed snuff around & dipped a chewed twig used to apply it to their gums was a universal activity. Northern soldiers were gobsmacked to see ladies in a fine carriage squirting tobacco juice as they passed by. A small pipe was in constant use from a very early age by both sexes.

americancivilwarforum.com> the-social-dip-southern-women-loved-their-snuff.

is a posting I wrote that covers Southern women's love of tobacco during the CW era.
I've also added something to a thread here around Southern women's use of tobacco. I think I garnered some quotes from Bell Irvin Wiley's book on Billy Yank, and the shock and awe of Northern soldiers to find Southern women indulging in the habit so profusely.

Personally, I've been both a smoker and a quitter and remember it's prevalence in several societies until the hammer of good health came down and banned it from any indoor arenas (e.g. offices, pubs, cafe's, etc). I'm still amazed to see old documentary news clips showing people smoking as they hold interviews, etc. At the same time, it is an era which holds many fond memories for me and includes cigarettes, cigars and pipes. I don't baulk at the notion. I do agree it's not something to embrace due to health considerations. But, all that being said, it's interesting to note how it was perceived back then and that folks were already 'disapproving'.
 
Here's what I posted in another thread from Billy Yank:

"An amazing number of soldiers comment on the prevalence of the tobacco habit among Southern women, especially the use of snuff. An Illinois captain wrote from Scottsboro, Alabama: "I went to the nearest house to camp today, to beg a little piece of tallow...I sat down by a fire in company with three young women, all cleanly dressed, and powdered to death. Their ages were from 18 to 24. Each of them had a quid of tobacco in her cheek about the size of my stone inkstand, and if they didn't make the extract fly worse than I ever saw in any country grocery, shoot me. These women here have so disgusted me with the use of tobacco that I have determined to abandon it". The surgeon of an Illinois regiment wrote his wife from Western Tennessee" "As I walked the streets on Memphis I met a lady...quite finely dressed...(with) a little stick in her mouth...As I approached her she removed it and spit upon the pavement a great stream of tobacco juice. She then returned the little stick which I saw had a little swab on the end of it. She was dipping.

Even the children were said to be addicted to the habit. Corporal Edward Edes of Massachusetts wrote his sister from Lookout Valley, Tennessee: "The little girls in these parts about seven or eight years old chew tobacco like veterans and babies smoke before they are weaned". But it was the fondness of the 'courting age' females for tobacco that seemed to be the most disturbing to the Yanks - especially the young ones. Wrote Private John Tallman from Vicksburg: "There are some nice looking girls, but they will chew tobacco, Sweet little things. Don't you think 'I' for instance would...make a nice show riding along in a carriage with a young lady, me spitting tobacco juice out of one of the carriage and she out the other...wall ain that rich, oh, cow!"

A young Illinois officer stationed in North Mississippi informed his homefolk: "Snuff dipping is an universal custom here, and there are only two women in all Iuka that do not practice it...Sometimes girls ask their beaux to take a dip with them during a spark. I asked if it didn't interfere with the old fashioned habit of kissing. She assured me that it did not in the least, and I marvelled".

Soldier references to smoking, chewing, and especially to 'dipping' among Southern women could be cited almost indefinitely...suffice to say that so much independent testimony is given in Union soldier letters and diaries of the use of tobacco in all parts of the country and among all classes that, even with due allowance for prejudice, revision of ideas as to the prevalence of the tobacco habit among old South's women is suggested.
"
 
The women in my family in Western Carolina were dipping well into the 20th century. It's not unheard of for women to dip snuff or chew tobacco where I live in Arkansas even now. One came in the library where I work the other day with a chaw of baccy in her lower lip, and it didn't strike me as odd until one of my more genteel coworkers pointed it out. 😁
 
In the 1930’s my Dad would visit his aunts north of Nashville in the hamlet of Whitehouse. The three country ladies would rock in time, taking turns spitting into the small smoking fire. Dad said that each had a stem of her preferred tree that they used to take a social dip. They would hold two fingers up to their lips & shoot a fine jet of juice at a spot on the burning coal. He said it was a wonder they didn’t put it out.
 
In the 1930’s my Dad would visit his aunts north of Nashville in the hamlet of Whitehouse. The three country ladies would rock in time, taking turns spitting into the small smoking fire. Dad said that each had a stem of her preferred tree that they used to take a social dip. They would hold two fingers up to their lips & shoot a fine jet of juice at a spot on the burning coal. He said it was a wonder they didn’t put it out.
What a great story!

:smoke:

(Someone had to get the smoking emoji in there!)
 
One interesting cultural thing is that cigarettes were the exclusive affectation of prostitutes. It was said that the paper cigarette originated in Paris.
Wow! So you didn't want to be caught dead smoking a cigarette ... and I notice none of the references about Southern women have them smoking cigarettes. Maybe that's why. I guess it was one way for these women to advertise their trade :unsure:
 
The women in my family in Western Carolina were dipping well into the 20th century. It's not unheard of for women to dip snuff or chew tobacco where I live in Arkansas even now. One came in the library where I work the other day with a chaw of baccy in her lower lip, and it didn't strike me as odd until one of my more genteel coworkers pointed it out. 😁
Fascinating women still do this now. So, it's still a thing and I guess passed down through the generations.
 
Fascinating women still do this now. So, it's still a thing and I guess passed down through the generations.
Yes, that's why I was surprised by all the past tense in this thread and references to it as only seeming to be a thing during the Civil War. It definitely outlasted the war! Tobacco is not grown where I live in Arkansas, but it is where I'm from in North Carolina. Using it in any form was usually seen, as one of my uncles likes to say, as supporting the economy of the great state of North Carolina.
 
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