Tobacco smoking in World War I

Abstract

This article follows an earlier Nowotwory publication [1] on anecdotal data relating to tobacco smoking. It concentrates pipe & cigarette smoking in World War I and relates to the soldiers of many countries. My impetus for the review, was a recent exhibition in Harrogate’s Mercer Art Gallery in the United Kingdom, which was entitled Brangwyn’s War: Posters of the First World War, [2, 3]. Frank Brangwyn who is largely unknown, except to art & photography specialists, was born in Bruges, Belgium in 1867, as Guillaume François Brangwyn, and died in 1956. Tobacco is mentioned in WWI ephemera not only in posters, postcards, lithographs and paintings, but also finds an appearance in a popular marching song, in the gift [Princess Mary’s tin box] given to all British soldiers & sailors for Christmas 1914 by Princess Mary, the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary, and in the story of the clergyman Woodbine Willie. This brief review is also appropriate because of the centenary of the outbreak of WWI in 1914.