The Social History of Smoking

by George Latimer Apperson

The tobacconists' sign that for very many years was in most general use was the figure of a highlander, which may still perhaps be found in one or two places, but which was not at all an unusual sight in the streets of London and other towns some forty or fifty years ago. Most men of middle age can remember when the snuff-taking highlander was the usual ornament to the entrance of a tobacconist's shop; but all have disappeared from London streets save two—I say two on the authority of Mr. E.V. Lucas, who gives it (in his "Wanderer in London") as the number of the survivors; but only one is known to me. This is the famous old wooden highlander which stood for more than a hundred years on guard at a tobacconist's shop in Tottenham Court Road. About the end of 1906 it was announced that the shop was to be demolished, and that the time-worn figure was for sale. The announcement created no small stir, and it was said that the offers for the highlander ran up to a surprising figure. He was bought ultimately by a neighbouring furnishing firm, and now stands on duty not far from his ancient post, though no passer-by can help feeling the incongruity between the time-honoured emblem of the snuff-taker and his present surroundings of linoleum "and sich."

Where Mr. Lucas's second survivor may be is unknown to me. Not so many years ago a wooden highlander, as a tobacconist's sign, was a conspicuous figure in Knightsbridge, and there was another in the Westminster Bridge Road; but tempus edax rerum has consumed them with all their brethren. In a few provincial towns a wooden highlander may still be found at the door of tobacco shops, but they are probably destined to early disappearance. In 1907 one still stood guard—a tall figure in full costume—outside a tobacconist's shop in Cheltenham, and may still be there. There is a highlander of oak in the costume of the Black Watch still standing, I believe, in the doorway of a tobacco shop at St. Heliers, Jersey. It is traditionally said to have been originally the figure-head of a war vessel which was wrecked on the Alderney coast. Another survivor may be seen at the door of a shop belonging to Messrs. Churchman, tobacco manufacturers, in Westgate Street, Ipswich. A correspondent of "Notes and Queries" describes it as a very fine specimen in excellent condition, and adds: "Mr. W. Churchman informs me that it belonged to his grandfather, who established the business in Ipswich in 1790, and he believed it was quite 'a hundred' year old at that time."

One of the earliest known examples of these highlanders as tobacconists' signs is that which was placed at the door of a shop in Coventry Street which was opened in 1720 under the sign of "The Highlander, Thistle and Crown." This is said to have been a favourite place of resort of the Jacobites. In his "Nicotine and its Rariora," Mr. A.M. Broadley gives the card, dated 1765, of "William Kebb, at ye Highlander ye corner of Pall Mall, facing St. James's, Haymarket," and says that the highlander was a favourite tobacconist's sign for 200 years. I have been unable, however, to find evidence of such a prolonged period of favour. I know of no certain seventeenth-century reference to the highlander as a tobacconist's sign.

The figure was usually made with a snuff mull in his hand—the highlander being always credited with a great love and a great capacity for snuff-taking. But one curious example was furnished, not only with a mull but with a bat-like implement of unknown use. Mr. Arthur Denman, F.S.A., writing in Notes and Queries, April 17, 1909, said: "I have a very neat little, genuine specimen of the old tobacconist's sign of a 42nd Highlander with his 'mull.' It is 3 ft. 6 in. high, and it differs from those usually met with in that under the left arm is an implement almost exactly like a cricket-bat. This bat has a gilt knob to the handle, and on the shoulder of it are three chevrons in gold, without doubt a sergeant's stripes. On the exposed side of the bat is what would appear to represent a loose strip of wood. This strip is nearly one-third of the width of the instrument, and extends up the middle about two-fifths of the length of the body of it. I can only guess that the bat was, at some time, primarily, an emblem of a sergeant's office, and, secondarily, used for the infliction of chastisement on clumsy or disorderly recruits; and perhaps it was equivalent to the Prügel of German armies, with which sergeants drove lagging warriors into the fray. But is there any record of such an accoutrement as being that of a sergeant in the British army? and what was the purpose of the loose strip, unless it was to cause the blow administered to resound as much as to hurt, as does the wand of Harlequin in a booth."

These questions received no answers from the learned correspondents of the most useful and omniscient of weekly papers. Personally, I much doubt Mr. Denman's suggested explanations of his highlander's curious implement. There is no evidence that a sergeant in the British army ever carried a cricket-bat-like implement either as a sign of office or to be used for disciplinary or punitive purposes like the canes of the German sergeants of long ago. It would seem to be more likely that this particular figure was of unusual, perhaps unique, make, and had some special local or individual significance, wherever or for whom it was first made and used, which has now been forgotten.

After the suppression of the Jacobite uprising of 1745, the English Government made war on Scottish nationality, and among other measures the wearing of the highland dress was forbidden by Parliament. On this occasion the following paragraph appeared in the newspapers of the time: "We hear that the dapper wooden Highlanders, who guard so heroically the doors of snuff-shops, intend to petition the Legislature, in order that they may be excused from complying with the Act of Parliament with regard to their change of dress: alledging that they have ever been faithful subjects to his Majesty, having constantly supplied his Guards with a pinch out of their Mulls when they marched by them, and so far from engaging in any Rebellion, that they have never entertained a rebellious thought; whence they humbly hope that they shall not be put to the expense of buying new cloaths." This is not a very humorous production, but at least it bears witness to the common occurrence in 1746 of the highlander's figure at the shops of snuff and tobacco-sellers.

The highlander, as he existed within living memory at many shop doors, and as he still exists at a few, was and is the survivor of many similar wooden figures as trade signs. The wooden figure of a negro or "Indian" with gilt loin-cloth and feathered head, has already been mentioned as an old tobacconist's sign. In early Georgian days a tobacconist named John Bowden, who dealt in all kinds of snuff, and also in "Aloe, Pigtail, and Wild Tobacco; with all sorts of perfumer's goods, wholesale and retail," traded at the sign of "The Highlander and Black Boy" in Threadneedle Street, London. At York, in this present year, 1914, I came upon a brightly painted wooden figure of Napoleon in full uniform and snuff-box in hand, standing at the door of a small tobacco-shop. Another class of sign or emblem was represented by the "wooden midshipman," which many of us have seen in Leadenhall Street, and which Dickens made famous in "Dombey and Son." Sometimes the wooden figure of a sailor stood outside public-houses with such signs as "The Jolly Sailor"; and a black doll was long a familiar token of the loathly shop kept by the tradesmen mysteriously known as Marine Store Dealers. Images of this kind sometimes stood at the door, or in many cases were placed on brackets or swung from the lintels.

Sir Walter Scott said that in London a Scotchman would walk half a mile farther to purchase his ounce of snuff where the sign of the Highlander announced a North Briton.

Dickens's little figure, which adorned old Sol Gills's shop, "thrust itself out above the pavement, right leg foremost," with shoe buckles and flapped waistcoat very much unlike the real thing, and "bore at its right eye the most offensively disproportionate piece of machinery." But this was only one of many "little timber midshipmen in obsolete naval uniforms, eternally employed outside the shop-doors of nautical instrument-makers in taking observations of the hackney-coaches." All have disappeared, together with the black dolls of the rag shops and many other old-time figures. A stray highlander or two, or other figure, may survive here and there; but with very few exceptions indeed, the once abundant tobacconists' signs have disappeared from our streets as completely as the emblems and tokens of other trades.