Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral History Anti Cigarette League

I research family history and I came across a relative of the wife Patrick Croal who at the age of 11 in 1901 died of nicotine poisoning. Newspaper reports said he had been an excessive smoker from a very early age.

The editor of the Sunday School Chronicle, Rev Frank Johnson after Patrick's death took up the fight to have tobacconists to stop displaying cigarettes packed in bright colours next to sweets and to stop selling cigarettes to young boys. He wanted sweet shops not to be able to sell tobacco at all.

Writing in his Chronicle he threatened all tobacconists if they didn't change their ways he would start an organisation called the Anti Cigarette League.
This he did and for a fee of one and a half pennies you could enrol and effectively take up the fight. The organisation went international.

Here in Wirral many joined the League and one school in New Ferry had 200 members.

The Shaftsbury Boys Club gave up a room so the Anti Cigarette League could hold weekly meetings but the meetings were for boys under 9 years old and was heavily attended each week.

The problem eventually reached parliament, proposals put forward was to tax cigarettes, at the time you could buy 10 for one penny and if you looked around you could buy 10 for a half penny. The proposer wanted to put cigarettes out of the reach of children through pricing.

Another proposal was to ban the sale of tobacco to anyone under the age of 16, which eventually happened.

Reasons given, at 16 the body is more mature and tobacco has less affect.

Prior to the availability of mechanisation to produce cigarettes (late 19th century), smokers primarily used pipes, especially cheap clay pipes for the poor. Lung cancer was virtually unheard of until cigarettes came into use, possibly because the price of tobacco dropped, most pipes used a very small amount of tobacco.

Tobacco smuggling into Liverpool was a huge business in the 19th century, the legitimate importers formed societies to wipe out the black market - although it is difficult to believe that any company didn't get creative with their own figures.

Taxation on tobacco in the UK started around 1660, much of the smoking world at and before that time were smoking cannabis or similar concoctions. It is not until the first world war that cannabis and opium smoking effectively got overtaken by tobacco, there is a paradox that many of the UK WW1 (and WW2) military hadn't smoked cannabis before being posted abroad yet cannabis usage still declined. I suspect in the UK that cannabis smoking may be getting on a par with tobacco again.