Women Smoking

[Randy Bryan Bigham]

Oh dear Bob - please tell me you're pulling our leg with this last image!

And Inger, I am glad you posted the Wharton reference. I have been meaning to look that up since you mentioned it before.

 

[Bob Godfrey]

You know me, Randy - 100% authentic! The 'Jack Rose' brand really was an early product of the American Tobacco Company. But if you want the genuine genuine Titanic brands, here are most of them as listed. Three Castles and Savory were English brands, sold in tins. From the US there was Richmond and Pall Mall, sold in flat card boxes. Not shown are Fribourg & Treyer, and the brands available in 3rd Class, which probably were Wills Woodbines and Players Navy Cut.

 

[Inger Sheil]

Rather like the little 'Rose and Jack' cafe down the road from where I lived in London - I did a double take every time I passed it, but the sign in front assured passersby that it had been in business over 25 years!

Players Navy Cut - as favoured by Henry Tingle Wilde's son, Henry Owen Wilde!

 

[Marilyn Lena Penner]

The 1920's paragraph in Susan's posting reminded me of something I read in either 'Cheaper by the Dozen' or it's sequel, 'Belles on their Toes' by Frank Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey.

Ernestine and her older sister Anne secretly tried smoking cigarettes. It went with the 'flapper' image - the 'bees-knees' in high school, along with rumble seats and racoon coats, but it didn't go well with Daddy Gilbreth [Young ladies did not smoke. Certainly not his girls. Their mother was certainly a refined lady, and she didn't smoke.]
Well, who should catch them puffing but Mrs. G. [She smelled the smoke]. Sensible parent that she apparently was, she asked them what they thought of the taste, now that they had tried it. They told her they did not care for the taste, but it was all the rage to smoke, so they had to learn to like it. She said, "Fine." and asked them for a cigarette and a match. She wanted to try it too. The girls were horrified. Their mother, become a smoker? Heaven forbid.
I don't know if the girls continued to smoke, but they made sure they did not lead their mother into temptation.

Marilyn P.

 

[Vitezslav Ivicic]

Randy,

could you, please, tell me where is it from? What is the source?
Had it been printed in some newspapers?

"In October 1912, "Lucile," as she disembarked the Kronprinzessin Cecille (sp?), was asked by clamoring reporters what she thought about the "spectacle" of women smoking on board. Poking her way through the throng with her walking stick, she exclaimed: "Nobody cares about that! All chic women smoke nowadays. Only the old frumps and those it makes sick are the exceptions."

Regards
Vitezslav

 

[Trevor Powell]

Virginia Clark was a heavy smoker. In her later years she battled emphysema, eventually succumbing to it.

 

[Mike Poirier]

Hi Trey

Mahala Douglas was a smoker as well. Her niece outs her in her auto biography

Mike

 

[Trevor Powell]

Helen Churchill Candee was a cigarette smoker. Lily Futrelle may have been one too.

 

[Matthew Chapman]

Are there any accounts of women trying to use the smoke room? And if they did, would they had been ejected, say a steward approaching them and politely informing women are not permitted in here? What if they got indignant? Or say, had an influential friend, say JJ. Astor, speak on their behalf? Would a steward contradict Astor to maintain policy?

And was the no-women allowed a company policy or an unspoken agreement by social mores of the time?

 

[Mark Baber]

25 January 1908: On the morning after New York's first major snowstorm (10.2 inches) of the season, workers arriving at the White Star pier to prepare for the arrival of Adriatic II, Czpt. E J. Smith, discover an unconscious man on the pier.... Among Adriatic's passengers are ... a number of female passengers who shocked others by freely smoking in the ship's lounge and "made no attempt to conceal the satisfaction they got from puffing at tiny cigarettes;" and Chester Alan Arthur, son of the U.S. president of the same name. (Source: The New York Times, 26 January 1908.)

 

[Dave Gittins]

There is a little opera about a woman who smokes. It's Il Segreto di Susanna (Susanna's Secret). It dates from 1909. Susanna's husband suspects she has a lover, because when he comes home the house smells of smoke and he doesn't smoke. In the end the truth comes out. Susanna secretly smokes at home. The opera ends with the pair happily lighting up together. I can't imagine how it could be staged today.

 

[Aly Jones]

Are there any accounts of women trying to use the smoke room? And if they did, would they had been ejected, say a steward approaching them and politely informing women are not permitted in here? What if they got indignant? Or say, had an influential friend, say JJ. Astor, speak on their behalf? Would a steward contradict Astor to maintain policy?

And was the no-women allowed a company policy or an unspoken agreement by social mores of the time?

Hi,
Heaps of us answered these questions on another sub forum under officers equity (may be wrong spelling) topic changed to women smoking. if you like to visit the smoking equity, you will find info on " if wether women smoked on Titanic or not".
I did read women were not barred from the smoking room, but they just knew not to go in.
I would also like to know if women were frowned on going into a so called man's room as well.
I personally think it was more the social times and not WSL barring women (no women policy)

 

[Arun Vajpey]

I was interested to learn from some older posts above that Helen Candee, Mahala Douglas and probably May Futrelle were smokers. But is there any evidence or even rumour that any of them smoked on the Titanic per se? I doubt it, personally.

Can it be that those three women and others took up smoking in the 1920s? After World War One, social norms changed a little and women smoking became more acceptable.

 

[Matthew Chapman]

Just as well, would it be too embarrassing for a man to have used the Reading & Writing Room? Oh sure, he could go in, and it looks quiet and inviting, but would he have to endure snickers from catty onlookers speculating if you're quite "straight"?

 

[Arun Vajpey]

Just as well, would it be too embarrassing for a man to have used the Reading & Writing Room?

What if the man was straight all right but a non-smoker (who could not stand the smell of smoke) and wished to read a book or write a letter? I expect there were a few non-smoking men even in those "macho" days?