Cambridge Letter
Changing attitudes
BILL KIRKMAN
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“Towards the end of his life, my father’s doctor advised him to give up smoking. His reaction was to change his doctor.”
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From July, smoking will be illegal in all enclosed public spaces throughout the United Kingdom.
Photo: AP
Scoring point: Advertisement for a smoke-free restaurant in Ireland.
FROM July, smoking will be illegal in all enclosed public spaces throughout the United Kingdom. It is already banned in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Now England is following suit.
The reason for the ban, obviously, is public health. It is the latest stage in a long series of measures taken since the link between smoking and cancer was recognised. They have included the requirement to include a health warning on all cigarette packets, and smoking bans on trains and aircraft.
Inevitably, there have been some adverse reactions to the new legislation, and complaints that it represents another manifestation of the “nanny State”. Generally, however, few people are surprised at the ban, most probably feel that it is not before time, and most — including the smokers — accept that it is justified.
For, the fact is that attitudes to smoking have changed dramatically in the past 20 or 30 years. Until the 1970s, smoking was the norm, not only acceptable, but actually expected. Winston Churchill as Prime Minister, for example, was nearly always seen smoking a large cigar. A quarter of a century later, Harold Wilson, the labour Prime Minister, smoked a pipe. Churchill’s cigar and Wilson’s pipe were in a real sense their trademarks, and were seen as reassuring signs of normality.
No Prime Minister today would dream of smoking in public. To do so would be a public relations disaster.
Widespread habit
At a domestic level, too, smoking was widespread. My parents were heavy smokers, and like many of my contemporaries, therefore, I grew up in a smoke-filled house. Towards the end of his life, my father’s doctor advised him to give up smoking. His reaction was to change his doctor.
His attitude was not unusual. Indeed, children — and in the United States doctors — were used in cigarette advertising, which sometimes claimed that smoking was good for you. As a child I remember making spills, from folded strips of newspaper, as a present for my grandfather, for him to use to light his pipe. No one suggested that my association with smoking was inappropriate.
As it happened, I never smoked, and never had any wish to do so. My wife, too, is a non-smoker. Nevertheless, for many years we always kept cigarettes in the house to offer to visitors. Our children, not just non-smokers but vehemently anti-smoking, finally cured us of that.
At work, change took longer. For my first dozen years as head of the university Careers Service I always had an ashtray prominently displayed on the table at which I sat with the students who came to consult me, so that they would feel at ease if they wished to light up a cigarette. At the end of that period, the one member of staff who by that stage was a smoker resigned — and immediately we all agreed that we should henceforth be a non-smoking office. The ashtrays were thrown away — and I do not recall any visitor showing signs of nervous withdrawal as a result.
(That is not a completely flippant remark. Smoking, after all, was for years seen as a natural, indeed almost inevitable, means of relieving any kind of stress.)
Quaint custom
Long before smoking was recognised as a health hazard, people did take account of the fact that tobacco smoke leaves a pervading odour. In upper class Victorian homes, there were special smoking rooms; and men wore smoking jackets specifically designed for the purposes of smoking tobacco. To quote Wikipedia: “The smoking jacket became a popular accessory in Victorian times, when it was believed that the ‘sensitive and delicate’ nostrils of ladies would be assailed by the pungent fumes of tobacco clinging to everyday clothing. Consequently it became de rigueur for every considerate gentleman to don his smoking jacket before lighting his cigar or pipe, usually after dinner”.
Devotees of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories may recall the episode in which Dr. Watson describes a summer night, soon after his marriage, seated “by my own hearth smoking a last pipe” when, shortly before midnight, Holmes arrives unexpectedly. “You look surprised, and no wonder!” the great detective declares. “Relieved, too, I fancy! Hum! You still smoke the Arcadia mixture of your bachelor days then! There’s no mistaking that fluffy ash upon your coat.”
A similar incident in a 21st century work of detective fiction would doubtless inspire, in the U.K. at least, horror at the assumption that a doctor would naturally smoke rather than amazement at the detective’s powers of deduction.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, UK. Email him at: bill.kirkman@gmail.com
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