tobaccoleaves

My dear departed father succumbed to lung cancer, in 1992. Think of how many millions of people have suffered since it was first discovered it could be smoked or chewed. Damned sad.

Tobacco grown in Ireland ?

The Times, 9 Oct 1905 ~
At a special meeting of the Irish Industrial Development Association Mr. R.E. Goodbody made an interesting statement about the Irish tobacco crop for 1905. In company with an American expert, he had just visited Randlestown, Navan, where Colonel Everard had ten acres under process of saving. He had never seen so good a yield in any country, and the expert was of the same opinion. The yield of the ten acres was three times as great as that from a twenty plot last year. The tobacco was a little slow in saving but smoked very well. More than 3,000 hands were employed in Irish tobacco factories.

See - www.navanhistory.ie/index.php?page=tobacco

Sixteen photos of Goodbody's in the NLI catalogue. Electric lights in evidence; looking 1910-ish more than 1890-ish - catalogue.nli.ie/Search/Results?lookfor=Goodbody%27s+Toba...

Prior to independence there had been two leading southern Irish firms, Goodbody’s and Carroll’s. The Goodbody tobacco operation had moved, along with its workers, to the South Circular Road (the site of the later Players-Wills factory) when its Tullamore factory burnt down in 1886. The Dublin factory registered an employment level of 320 in 1908, and was described at the time as much larger than Carroll’s of Dundalk.

Some Déja vu here, I think we were discussing Greenville Tobacco Manufactory not so long ago.

Flickr amazes! Cigarette card c. 1900 via cigcardpix en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esme_Beringer

Accompanying note: "The leaves are dampened under a fine spray before going to the stripper in the plant, who pulls the stem from each leaf, dividing the leaf into left and right wrappers. Care must be taken to keep the wrappers separate in left and right bundles, since the machines can be set for either left or right wrapping."