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Tobacco History:

The Social History of Smoking

by George Latimer Apperson

First published 1914

Chapter 14 Part 2

SMOKING IN CHURCH

Smoking, it may safely be asserted, was never practised commonly in English churches. Even in our own day people have been observed smoking—not during service time, but in passing through the building—in church in some of the South American States, and nearer home in Holland; but in England such desecration has been occasional only, and quite exceptional.

One need not be much surprised at any instance of lack of reverence in English churches during the eighteenth century, and a few instances can be given of church smoking in that era.

Blackburn, Archbishop of York, was a great smoker. On one occasion he was at St. Mary's Church, Nottingham, for a confirmation. The story of what happened was told long afterwards in a letter written in December 1773 by John Disney, rector of Swinderby, Lincolnshire, the grandson of the Mr. Disney who at the time of the Archbishop's visit to St. Mary's was incumbent of that church. This letter was addressed to James Granger, and was published in Granger's correspondence. "The anecdote which you mention," wrote the Mr. Disney of Swinderby, "is, I believe, unquestionably true. The affair happened in St. Mary's Church at Nottingham, when Archbishop Blackbourn (of York) was there on a visitation. The Archbishop had ordered some of the apparitors, or other attendants, to bring him pipes and tobacco, and some liquor into the vestry for his refreshment after the fatigue of confirmation. And this coming to Mr. Disney's ears, he forbad them being brought thither, and with a becoming spirit remonstrated with the Archbishop upon the impropriety of his conduct, at the same time telling his Grace that his vestry should not be converted into a smoking-room."

Another eighteenth-century clerical worthy, the famous Dr. Parr, an inveterate smoker, was accustomed to do what Mr. Disney prevented Archbishop Blackburn from doing—he smoked in his vestry at Hatton. This he did before the sermon, while the congregation were singing a hymn, and apparently both parties were pleased, for Parr would say: "My people like long hymns; but I prefer a long clay."

Robert Hall, the famous Baptist preacher, having once upon a time strongly denounced smoking as an "odious custom," learned to smoke himself as a result of his acquaintance with Dr. Parr. Parr was such a continual smoker that anyone who came into his company, if he had never smoked before, had to learn the use of a pipe as a means of self-defence. Hall, who became a heavy smoker, is said to have smoked in his vestry at intervals in the service. He probably found some relief in tobacco from the severe internal pains with which for many years he was afflicted.

Mr. Ditchfield, in his entertaining book on "The Parish Clerk," tells a story of a Lincolnshire curate who was a great smoker, and who, like Parr, was accustomed to retire to the vestry before the sermon and there smoke a pipe while the congregation sang a psalm. "One Sunday," says Mr. Ditchfield, "he had an extra pipe, and Joshua (the clerk) told him that the people were getting impatient.

"'Let them sing another psalm,' said the curate.

"'They have, sir,' replied the clerk.

"'Then let them sing the hundred and nineteenth,' replied the curate.

"At last he finished his pipe, and began to put on the black gown, but its folds were troublesome and he could not get it on.

"'I think the devil's in the gown,' muttered the curate.

"'I think he be,' dryly replied old Joshua."

The same writer, in his companion volume on "The Old Time Parson," mentions that the Vicar of Codrington in 1692 found that it was actually customary for people to play cards on the Communion Table, and that "when they chose the churchwardens they used to sit in the Sanctuary smoking and drinking, the clerk gravely saying, with a pipe in his mouth, that such had been their custom for the last sixty years."