From Chapter 15:Notwithstanding the few examples given above, tobacconists, more than most tradesmen, seem to have continued to use signs that had at least some relevance to their trade. Abel Drugger was a "tobacco-man,"
i.e. a tobacco-seller in Ben Jonson's play of "The Alchemist," 1610, so that it is not very surprising to find the name used occasionally as a tobacconist's sign. Towards the end of the eighteenth century one Peter Cockburn traded as a tobacconist at the sign of the "Abel Drugger" in Fenchurch Street, and informed the public on the advertising papers in which he wrapped up his tobacco for customers that he had formerly been shopman at the Sir Roger de Coverley—a notice which has preserved the name of another tobacconist's sign borrowed from literature. Seventeenth—century London signs were the "Three
Tobacco Pipes," "Two
Tobacco Pipes" crossed, and "Five
Tobacco Pipes." At Edinburgh in the eighteenth century there were tobacconists who used two pipes crossed, a roll
of tobacco and two leaves over two crossed pipes, and a roll
of tobacco and three leaves.