Cigarettes and Signs: Sepia Saturday

This week's Sepia Saturday  prompt photograph features a building c.1930s displaying a large billboard advertising Players cigarettes.

The photograph below I showed last year, but it fits the prompt so well, I had to include it here.

The billboard proclaims "Grey's Cigarettes as "just honest to goodness tobacco."  It was painted by my father-in -law John Robert Donaldson.  directly onto the board, because of a shortage of paper. immediately after the war.    Standing alongside  is  his son Ian  who followed  him into his signwriting and decorating  business. 

John was born in South Shields, County Durham, and the third generation to be given his joint Christian names which stemmed back to his namesake born in 1854.   Here he is on his motor bike with his youngest son, my husband.   Note - no thought for crash helmets in those days!
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A very happy family group taken, I think at a wedding, with my uncle front right smoking, and my aunt, mother and grandmother alongside him.   

With my father, c.1946.  Dad's pose with his cigarette in his hand,  near a child would be very frowned upon now!  

It was a familiar sight to see my father seated at the small typewriter on his bureau, which had been a  wedding present from my mother.  He was either ploughing through the paperwork of his job as a sales rep., or keeping in touch with his sister and brothers  by letter.  

I can date this photograph to around 1961, as it was taken in our new home in Edinburgh.  Shortly after we moved there from the north of England,  my aunt (Dad's sister in law)  died of lung cancer.  Dad immediate stopped smoking and never touched a cigarette again.   

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Some more cigarette adverts courtesy of Pixabay.  

                           

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Tobacco was first introduced into Europe in the late 16th century by Jean Nicot (hence the word nicotine).  At first, it was used  mainly for pipe-smoking, chewing, and snuff. Cigars became popular in the the early 1800s and by  the early 20th century,cigarettes were widely smoked.  In the two world wars, cigarettes were regarded as an essential gift to send to soldiers and prisoners of war in their "comfort" parcels.

But by the late 1940's and 1950's there was increasing scientific evidence that smoking caused significant health risks.  In the UK,  Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) was established in January 1971 by the Royal College of Physicians.  Campaigns eventually led to the banning of point-of-sale advertising, banning of cigarette vending machines, and the introduction of plain packaging with health warnings. 

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Of course, other pleasures await after smoking - as depicted in these signs  from Beamish Open Air Museum  in County Durham, one of our favourite family outings. In 300 acres of countryside it recreates and explores the everyday life of people in North East England from around 1880 to 1950, with a  High Street of houses, shops &  trades, vintage trams and buses, a  colliery with a pit village,  farm, manor house and railway station.   

And finally, a more up to date, attractive. cheery  way of advertising in Austria,  with a baker's sign promoting its handmade biscuits  -  Lebkuchen - for me much nicer than cigarettes! 

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Sepia Saturday gives bloggers an opportunity

to share their family history through photographs.

 

Click HERE to read how other bloggers have responded to this week's prompt.