THE SMOKING HABIT.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5517, 23 December 1929, Page 2

THE SMOKING HABIT.

COMMON IN LONDON THEATRES CIGARETTES THE VOGUE. “Smoking is not permitted in the auditorium.” This notice appears on the programmes of a few of the London theatres, from which it may be correctely concluded that smoking is allowed in most of them (writes “H.P.” in a London Paper). There are naturally those who are against the practice, but since the ladies started to indulge openly those have become markedly less. Indeed, at matinee performances the cultivation of cigarette-smoking appears to be very general, and in some of the older and less well-ventilated theatres, one usually witnesses the performances through a light haze of tobacco smoke. One has to be thankful that the habit is pretty well restricted to the cigarette, more by custom than rule. I sat in the gallery at the Winter Garden Theatre during a performance of “The Vagabond King” behind a man who was emitting dense clouds of smoke from a well-matured pipe, which was not at all a pleasant experience. I have seen men smoking cigars in the stalls, quite oblivious of the nuisance they were creating. Not only is smoking allowed in most London theatres, but almost without exception each theatre boasts a bar as well (stocked with beer, wines, and spirits, as any hotel), which is freely patronised during the intervals. This is peculiar- to England. I saw no smoking in any of the Parisian theatres outside the vaudeville and revue houses, and the habit is not followed in American theatres to any extent. England suffers the smokers gladly, almost anywhere, so it is small wonder that its tobacco magnates invariably yield enormous sums to the Treasury on their decease.