From Chapter 11: Tobacco-
smoking was advancing victoriously all along the line. Absurd old conventions and ridiculous restrictions had to give way or were broken through in every direction. The compartments for
smokers on railway trains, at first provided sparsely and grudgingly, became more and more numerous. The practice of
smoking out of doors, which the early Victorians held in particular abhorrence, became common—at least so far as cigars and cigarettes were concerned. Lady Dorothy Nevill, whose memory covered so large a part of the nineteenth century, said, in the "Leaves" from her note-book which was published in 1907, that to smoke in Hyde Park, even up to comparatively recent years, was looked upon as absolutely unpardonable; while
smoking anywhere with a lady would, in the earlier days, have been classed as an almost disgraceful social crime. The first gentleman of whom Lady Dorothy heard as having been seen
smoking a cigar in the Park was the Duke of Sutherland, and the lady who told her spoke of it as if she had been present at an earthquake! Pipes were (and are) still looked at askance in many places where the
smoking of cigars and cigarettes is freely allowed, and fashion frowned on the pipe in street or Park.
From Chapter 14: Sometimes tobacco was used in church for disinfecting or deodorizing purposes. The churchwardens' accounts of St. Peter's, Barnstaple, for 1741 contain the entry: "Pd. for Tobacco and Frankincense burnt in the Church 2
s. 6
d." Sprigs of juniper, pitch, and "sweete wood," in combination with incense, were often used for the same purpose.
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.