• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team
  • HI folks the server that hosts the site completely died including the Hdd's and backups.
    Luckily i create an offsite backup once a week! this has now been restored so we have lost a few days posts.
    im still fixing things at the moment so bear with me and im still working on all images 90% are fine the others im working on now
    we are now using a backup solution

Cigarette smoking

Don't know why they called them ' Wild' Woodbines
I always assumed it was connected to the plant on the packet which was, I think, "wild woodbine" - a type of wild honeysuckle.
My one grandad smoked them and I remember as a child hating the smell but liking the packet.
My other grandad smoked Players untipped - he had brown fingers. In most photos (even in the army in WW1) he has a cigarette in his fingers. :rolleyes:
 
Last edited:
Hi all I as a lifetime non smoker I can still recall when l was working that the carpenters on site favoured the Woodbine packet as they reckoned if they put it behind a door hinge it would just do enough to make a door hang correctly on the event of snags Acklam19
 
There`s one thing worse than a smoker.. an ex smoker who brags about how easy it is to give up the habit. I found it really hard & tried many times & many ways to give up, i tried a pipe, cigars, herbal baccy roll ups & i think it has to be sheer willpower in the end. I haven`t smoked now for over 30 years but i`m still paying the price as i have copd. Can`t chase the wife round the bedroom anymore !
 
We this for me has been interesting. Looking further it seems that cigarettes filters were originally made of cork, wrapped around the outside of the cigarette; cork tipped, and used to prevent tobacco flakes from getting on the smoker's tongue. Many are still patterned to look like cork. Craven A and Turkey Rad were two such brands that used real cork.

It seems that the tobacco industry was very quick to jump on the bandwagon following a spate of speculative announcements from doctors and researchers concerning a possible link between lung diseases and smoking.

The tobacco industry determined that the illusion of filtration was more important than filtration itself. It added chemicals in the filter so that its colour becomes darker when exposed to smoke. The industry wanted filters to be seen as effective, for marketing reasons, despite not making cigarettes any less unhealthy.

Filling a given length of cigarette with filter is also a lot cheaper than filling it with tobacco, so filter tips were a win win for the tobacco industry.

Finaly, the tobacco industry did produce a Rose Petal Cigarette, made with real rose petals wrapped around the filter.

Cork Tip.JPG
 
My memory of tipped cigarettes meant that I couldn't smoke our mom's dog ends...small as they were, I could still manage a couple of drags. Once the tipped fags took hold, she would smoke the whole thing right down to the cork. Fags never tasted as good after that, there was a major difference in the taste, but you never had as much brown yellow fingers either. I quit in 1972.
Dave A
 
Just thinking about smoking fags with filters, A lot of people got burnt when smoking in bed, when the hot end would fall off the filter and set the bed alight.

I am sure a few house fires were caused when the end of the fag dropped down the side of the cushion on the settee

Funny when I think about smoking in bed, did it myself a few times.
 
There`s one thing worse than a smoker.. an ex smoker who brags about how easy it is to give up the habit. I found it really hard & tried many times & many ways to give up, i tried a pipe, cigars, herbal baccy roll ups & i think it has to be sheer willpower in the end. I haven`t smoked now for over 30 years but i`m still paying the price as i have copd. Can`t chase the wife round the bedroom anymore !
me too smudge i try'd and try'd no way .and in the end i was ill with the the flue,and got up one morning lit a fag and fell on the floor. my head spinning. thats it i said no more. like you i have copd. and i still have the cravings for one ..... who's wife smudge:grinning:
 
Just thinking about smoking fags with filters, A lot of people got burnt when smoking in bed, when the hot end would fall off the filter and set the bed alight.

I am sure a few house fires were caused when the end of the fag dropped down the side of the cushion on the settee

Funny when I think about smoking in bed, did it myself a few times.
 
In the mid - 60s Battlegroup Training used to be carried out in the Libyan desert, (imagine that !). One day we were looking around Bir Hackeim, an old fort that the Free French held out against the Afrika Korps. Kicking one of the rusty biscuit tins, lining a trench, caused the filling to pour out and in the rubble was a pristine Woodbine packet. I kept it as a souvenir but within a couple of days it had crumbled away.
 
Embassy also offered cork filters. Like the Turkish brand mentioned earlier, they had an impressive crest. Viv.F96E963C-B28D-42E8-875A-890C07A3E0F7.jpeg
 
Being a former “fag ash Lil” (crikey where did that come from ?!) I smoked lots of different brands and really disliked unfiltered ones. You Put a lot of effort into discretely removing bits of tobacco from you lips. But I never knowingly smoked one with a cork tip. What was the difference to the later ‘cotton wool’ type tips ? Viv.
 
“Fag ash Lil” he he, that’s a blast from the past. The cork tip was just a thin cork wrapping around the outside of the fag to prevent tobacco getting into the smokers’ mouth. Some posh cigarettes used rose petals too.

The cotton wool type filters were a response by the tobacco companies following from reports by the medical profession that smoking could be dangerous. The filters of course made no difference but did have a dye in them to make them look like they were filtering out the tar.

You may also be pleased to know that some tobacco companies made their filter tips from asbestos.
 
“Fag ash Lil” he he, that’s a blast from the past. The cork tip was just a thin cork wrapping around the outside of the fag to prevent tobacco getting into the smokers’ mouth. Some posh cigarettes used rose petals too.

The cotton wool type filters were a response by the tobacco companies following from reports by the medical profession that smoking could be dangerous. The filters of course made no difference but did have a dye in them to make them look like they were filtering out the tar.

You may also be pleased to know that some tobacco companies made their filter tips from asbestos.
wow.dint know that.
Asbestos cigarette filters were produced by Hollinsworth & Vose Company, also called H&V Specialties, for Lorillard Tobacco Company’s “Kent Micronite” brand cigarettes. The crocidolite used in the filters is one of the most toxic types of asbestos.
 
Hi,

My grandfather smoked Craven 'A' and he died in 1938. He left behind him some opened
packets of 20, which my Gran had put into some bags of knitting wool "to keep the moths out".

There they remained until the late 50's, when I found them in my mid teens.
They certainly had real cork round the end, - and I smoked them!. They didn't taste very
good, but I would definitely put that down to old age rather than the tips.

I always preferred plain cigarettes, and I believe that they were safer than filter cigs, as
most of the tars accumulated in the last half inch of the tobacco, not in the filter itself.
I remember a lot of smokers seemed to smoke them right down to the filter.

I gave up completely in 1973 whilst working behind a pub bar, - trust me. the
customers didn't make it easy, -and I've never touched one since.

Kind regards
Dave
 
Being a former “fag ash Lil” (crikey where did that come from ?!) I smoked lots of different brands and really disliked unfiltered ones. You Put a lot of effort into discretely removing bits of tobacco from you lips. But I never knowingly smoked one with a cork tip. What was the difference to the later ‘cotton wool’ type tips ? Viv.
I had a colleague known Fag Ash Lil, the same person was also called Betty Bleach, and Madge the Toothless Old Dinnerlady. She doesn't know though. We had a top 20 song chart to fit our colleagues, She got, Smokee Gets in Your Eyes by anyone who sits near her. Mind we had another 2, Lilo Lil, and Half a crown Lil.
 
I was told that Nan's dad smoked Twist in a pipe down the garden. Her mum wouldn't have it in the house it stank. Grandad smoked Kensitas and Players No 6 before that, I have a Players Tin. with the sailor on. And some gold tins. Mum smoked in her teens, untipped with a hair grip. Dad, anything going. Then Craven Aromatic in a pipe. I still have his Condor free gift of a leather wallett with electrical screwdrivers in and fuses. It smells of his baccy so I like it. And they are usefull. Good for repairing spectacles. Smoking killed his dad in his early 50s when they said smoking was good for you. I brought dad Lola from Spain but he said they were too strong. Nan smoked 1 a day after dinner, she had an elegant case with a lady in a bouffant dress on it, Aunty smoked one a year on Christmas Day with her yearly glass of sherry. She lived till she was 98.I smoked when I was 15, hated it, bit the ends off, all soggy. My Parents didn't mind so the dare wasn't there, but it was too expensive.
 
My granddad in Barton's Bank used to send round me to the shop in Potter's Hill for a "pen'orth of twist" then roll it in his hands to break it up for his pipe.

On a less cheery note my younger brother Gordon died horribly from lung cancer caused by fags, they removed his lung and the hole in his chest oozed stinking green fluid for a couple of weeks before he finally passed.
I remember that hospital ward full of patients in a similar state or with emphysema walking around dragging their oxygen bottles along.
 
Not at good way to go, Eric, and after years of 60 a day until about five years ago, it was emphysema that finished off my brother earlier this year. Whilst oxygen allows them a certain amount of mobility, it is the inability to get rid of the carbon dioxide that is the killer so he told me.

Maurice :cool:
 
Back
Top