The Irish tobacco business 1779-1935 By Seán Whitney Thesis completed under the supervision of Dr David Fleming In fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Limerick February 2019 Declaration I confirm that the content of this thesis is my own original work except where otherwise indicated with reference to secondary sources. _________________________ Seán Whitney February 2019 i Abstract This thesis chronicles the manufacture, retailing and consumption of tobacco in Ireland. Its purpose is to demonstrate that tobacco played an important part in the economic and social life of the country. The tobacco trade evolved from hundreds of local small-scale merchants to one which boasted of having the largest tobacco factory in the world. It shows that a small number adapted to modern manufacturing and marketing methods and how they responded to the threats from overseas competition. The relationship between the state and the tobacco trade centred on the state’s need to protect the revenue it raised from duties placed on the commodity. The considerable body of legislation enacted, allied to the investment made by the state in establishing agencies to secure this revenue speaks loudly of the trade’s importance to the national economy. The threats from smuggling and adulteration and the perceived threat from domestic cultivation cast doubts on the true level of consumption in the early nineteenth century. By equating imports for home consumption as the official level of consumption, the study reveals that tobacco use continued to rise throughout the period despite wars, internal unrest, famine and depopulation. Irish consumer’s mode of consumption and choice of tobacco type differed from British and European customs. Fashion, price, convenience and marketing are shown to have contributed to the changes in the way tobacco was consumed and in who was consuming it. The study looks at the popularity of tobacco amongst the Irish poor contrasting their enjoyment of it with the views of those above them in society who saw it as a waste of meagre resources and thus morally wrong. The gendering of tobacco consumption in the nineteenth century is examined and shows how women were subject to societal mores that sought to separate them from tobacco and its users. The study highlights smoking as being symbolically important in the struggle for women’s equality. As an item of everyday consumption, tobacco was enjoyed at all levels of society which made the tobacco trade an important element in the economy in itself and as an essential source of state revenue. ii Contents Declaration i Abstract ii Contents iii List of tables and illustrations iv Abbreviations vii Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 One- The business of the tobacco trade 15 Two- The threats to the state’s tobacco revenue 78 Three- Consumption: Quantities and modes 142 Four – Societal attitudes to tobacco 205 Conclusion 270 Bibliography 281 iii List of tables and illustrations 1.1 Irish tobacco imports (Pounds) 1790-1895. 22 1.2 Amounts paid to the revenue by Clune’s of Limerick, 1928-35. 56 1.3 Number employed in the tobacco trade in Ireland, by province 1841-1911. 58 1.4 Number of women employed in the tobacco trade in Ireland, by province, 1841-1911. 60 2.1 State revenue from tobacco duties 1790-1918 (£s). 80 2.2 Tobacco seizures (Pounds) in Ireland, 1816-25. 87 2.3 Amount of tobacco (Pounds) paying duty in Ireland, 1815-30. 89 2.4 Duty paid on tobacco in Ireland 1815-30. 89 2.5 Exports of Irish manufactured tobacco, (Pounds) 1772-1811. 101 2.6 Quantities of Irish grown tobacco, (Pounds) 1905-10. 120 2.7 Tobacco adulteration seizures in Ireland 1864-77. 137 3.1 Customs duties on snuff and unmanufactured tobacco in Ireland, 1790-1820. 149 3.2 Number of pounds of snuff paying customs duty in England and Ireland 1790-1826. 149 3.3 Snuff seizures (Pounds) in England and Ireland, 1789-1826. 150 3.4 Quantities of unmanufactured tobacco entered for home consumption in Ireland, 1800-97. 152 iv 3.5 Vegetable gardener at Belmont House, Co Carlow, smoking a dudeen pipe, c.1900. 153 3.6 Unusual Irish-made pipes, c. late 1820s. 154 3.7 Irish pipe tobacco consumption versus cigarette (Pounds) 1920-35. 170 3.8 Effect of duty rate changes on consumption in Ireland, 1793-1821. 174 3.9 Duty rate changes on unmanufactured tobacco in Ireland, 1789-1918 in pence per pound. 175 3.10 State revenue from tobacco imported into Ireland 1800-26. 175 3.11 Tobacco and tea consumption 1845-60 (pounds. 176 3.12 Tobacco consumed per capita in Britain and Ireland (in pounds) 1800-1910. 179 3.13 Irish Tobacco revenue, 1909-18. 182 3.14 Total U.K. tobacco revenue showing Irish contribution 1900-1920. 183 3.15 Irish tobacco consumption and receipts 1924-1935. 185 3.16 ‘Paragon’ newspaper advertisement 1906. 188 3.17 ‘Park Drive’ cigarette advertisement 1910. 189 3.18 Mick McQuaid enamel poster c. late 1920s. 192 3.19 Clune’s ‘Sarsfield Plug’ enamel advertising poster c.1910-40. 192 3.20 The Park Kiosk Limerick. 193 v 4.1 Salruck Graveyard, County Galway, c.1890-1903. 223 4.2 N.A. Woods An Irish wake (1819). 224 4.3 Tobacco hogsheads retrieved from the river Liffey 1921. 247 4.4 Erskine Nicol, The shebeen (1859). 254 4.5 Robert Gibbs, The reading lesson-a family group (1834). 254 4.6 S. McCloy, Ripe pears for sale (1865). 255 4.7 Unknown, Sketches from Ireland: woman making nets in the Claddagh, Galway (1870). 256 4.8 Gore Booth and Althea Gyles 1893. 256 4.9. William Leech, The cigarette c. (1915). 257 4.10 Elizabeth Southerden Thompson Butler, Listed for the Connaught Rangers (1878). 258 4.11 William Orpen, A man with a cigarette (1917). 259 4.12 Erskine Nicol, A sheeben in Donnybrook (detail) (1851). 260 4.13 Daniel Maclise, Snap apple night or all hallows eve (detail)(1832). 261 4.14 James Brenan, News from America (1875). 261 4.15 Howard Helmick, Reading the news, the proclamation of the Land League (1881). 262 4.16 Howard Helmick, A quiet pipe 1878. 263 4.17 Joseph Wilson, The Adelphi Club, Belfast (1783). 264 4.18 William Brocas, A smoking club c. 1814-20. 265 vi Abbreviations D.A.T.I. Department of agricultural and technical instruction ITTJ Irish Tobacco Trade Journal N.A.I. National Archives of Ireland N.L.I. National Library of Ireland P.R.O.N.I. Public Records Office of Northern Ireland vii Acknowledgements I would like to gratefully acknowledge the support of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of History at the University of Limerick. Their support in the form of fee waivers and field research funding was essential to the completion of this thesis and for this I am sincerely thankful. Equally important was the advice, assistance and encouragement given freely over the last four years by members of the faculty and the department; in no particular order, Dr Ciara Breathnach, Dr Carmel Hannan, Dr Martin Power, Professor Anthony McElligott and Professor Eoin Devereaux. I also extend my thanks to Pattie Punch, Ken Bergin and the library staff at the university. I will be forever grateful to my supervisor, Dr David Fleming, for his guidance throughout the period of this research. His knowledge, experience, wisdom and enthusiasm were central to the completion of this study. I remain indebted to Ms Holly O’Farrell and Mr Robert Collins for their helpful and friendly advice and to John and Mary Mullen for their generous hospitality. I would particularly like to acknowledge the assistance of Mr Brian Walsh, County Museum Dundalk and Mr Alan O’Kelly, P.J. Carroll, Dublin who facilitated access to the P.J. Carroll company records in their possession. My thanks go to Mr Jim Murphy formerly managing director of P.J. Carroll for his assistance in obtaining a copy of an unpublished company history. I extend my thanks to the ever helpful staff in the National Archives of Ireland, the National Library of Ireland, the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland and the British Library. I would like to sincerely thank my wife Phil and my family for their unyielding support in these last few years. Without their support and encouragement this thesis would never have been completed. I imagine Phil’s private thoughts match the sentiments once expressed by Dr Martin Luther King, ‘free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we’re free at last’. viii Introduction Tobacco, sugar and the potato must be considered the earliest and most enduring of the botanical elements which entered Ireland in what Alfred W. Crosby termed, the Colombian exchange, following the discovery of the New World.1 The initial arrival of tobacco into Europe was conducted along Spanish trade routes from where its use spread to northern Europe, the Mediterranean countries and eastwards to the Ottoman lands and onwards to China and Japan.2 The European commodification of the tobacco plant used by Native American tribes as part of their sacred and cultural traditions was an increasingly important part of the development of transatlantic trade routes which involved the sending of manufactured goods to Africa, the onward shipping of slaves to the Americas and the return to Europe of goods including tobacco.3 By the 1630s tobacco consumption and cultivation was practised worldwide and having overcome official objections to its use in most of these regions the commercial value and revenue collection potential of tobacco was recognised by merchants and the state.4 In Ireland, tobacco has been consumed since the Elizabethan era.