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Tobacco History:
The Social History of Smoking
by George Latimer Apperson
First published in 1914

Shop-signs were one of the most conspicuous features of the streets of old London. In days when the numbering of houses was unknown, the use of signs was indispensable for identification; and greatly must they have contributed to the quaint and picturesque appearance of the streets. Some projected far over the narrow roadway—competition to attract attention and custom is no modern novelty—some were fastened to posts or pillars in front of the houses. By the time of Charles II the overhanging signs had become a nuisance and a danger, and in the seventh year of that King's reign an Act was passed providing that no sign should hang across the street, but that all should be fixed to the balconies or fronts or sides of houses. This Act was not strictly obeyed; and large numbers of signs were hung over the doors, while many others were affixed to the fronts of the houses. Eventually, in the second half of the eighteenth century, signs gradually disappeared and the streets were numbered. There were occasional survivals which are to be found to this day, such as the barber's pole, accompanied sometimes by the brass basin of the barber-surgeon, the glorified canister of a grocer or the golden leg of a hosier; and inn signs have never failed us; but by the close of the eighteenth century most of the old trade signs which flaunted themselves in the streets had disappeared.

The sellers of tobacco naturally hung out their signs like other tradesfolk. Signs in their early days were, no doubt, chosen to intimate the trades of those who used them, and in the easy-going old-fashioned days when it was considered the right and natural thing for a son to be brought up to his father's trade and to succeed him therein, they long remained appropriate and intelligible. Later, as we shall see, they became meaningless in many cases. But in the days when tobacco-smoking first came into vogue, the signs chosen naturally had some reference to the trade they indicated, and one of the earliest used was the sign of the "Black Boy," in allusion to the association of the negro with tobacco cultivation. The "Black Boy" existed as a shop-sign before tobacco's triumph, for Henry Machyn in his "Diary," so early as December 30, 1562, mentions a goldsmith "dwellying at the sene of the Blake Boy, in the Cheep"; but the early sellers of tobacco soon fastened on this appropriate sign. The earliest reference to such use may be found in Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," 1614, where, in the first scene, Humphrey Waspe says: "I thought he would have run mad o' the Black Boy in Bucklersbury, that takes the scurvy, roguy tobacco there." Later, the "Black Boy," like other once significant signs, became meaningless and was used in connexion with various trades. Early in the eighteenth century a bookseller at the sign of the "Black Boy" on London Bridge was advertising Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe"; another bookseller traded at the "Black Boy" in Paternoster Row in 1712. Linendrapers, hatters, pawnbrokers and other tradesmen all used the same sign at various dates in the eighteenth century. But side by side with this indiscriminate and unnecessary use of the sign there existed a continuous association of the "Black Boy" with the tobacco trade. A tobacconist named Milward lived at the "Black Boy" in Redcross Street, Barbican, in 1742; and many old tobacco papers show a black boy, or sometimes two, smoking. Mr. Holden MacMichael, in his papers on "The London Signs" says: "Mrs. Skinner, of the old-established tobacconist's opposite the Law Courts in the Strand, possessed, about the year 1890, two signs of the 'Black Boy,' appertaining, no doubt, to the old house of Messrs. Skinner's on Holborn Hill, of the front of which there is an illustration in the Archer Collection in the Print Department of the British Museum, where the black boy and tobacco-rolls are depicted outside the premises." The "Black Boy," indeed, continued in use by tobacconists until the nineteenth century was well advanced. A tobacconist had a shop "uppon Wapping Wall" in 1667 at the sign of the "Black Boy and Pelican."

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.