Cigarettes 197 



The dainty, unsubstantial, airy cigarette is the 

 natural smoke of the Latin peoples. Its use in this 

 country dates from only some forty years ago. In 

 1 84s a writer noted that the cigarette was smoked by 

 foreign visitors only. The Crimean War of 1854-1856 

 led many military and naval officers to adopt this 

 mode of smoking, then common in Malta, the Levant, 

 Turkey, and Russia. English officers, unable to 

 procure cigars and driven by the hardships of the 

 Crimean campaign to the alleviation of tobacco, took 

 to the cigarette smoked by their French and Turkish 

 allies. Returning, they brought the mode to England, 

 and the cigarette became fashionable among club- 

 men and in the higher circles. The first well-known 

 person who smoked cigarettes publicly in London 

 was Laurence Oliphant, who had acquired the 

 practice during his many years' residence in Russia, 

 Turkey, and Austria. 



At that time smokers made their own cigarettes as 

 they needed them. About 1865 or 1866 their use 

 had so spread that manufacturers began to cater for 

 cigarette smokers. Even then manufacturers em- 

 ployed only a single man, usually a Pole or Russian, 

 to make up cigarettes occasionally. The firm that 

 now turns out the most cigarettes in England at that 

 time made only a few hundred pounds of tobacco a 

 year into the dainty, paper-enveloped rolls. The 

 demand for cigarettes increased, and they are now 

 turned out by machines, which are marvels of 

 ingenuity, at the rate of 200 to 400 a minute. 



Rice-paper, with which cigarettes are made, has 

 nothing to do with rice, but is made from the mem- 



