Thought I would just write a paragraph or two on this subject as all the pubs I lived in had this problem.

So many people smoked when I was young. Saturday nights in a pub we’re like being in a fog! 

My parents smoked, my Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents etc. People smoked in the street, in the office, restaurant, on buses, trains, in the cinema and theatres, just everywhere, anytime anyplace.  Even in the doctor’s surgery and usually the doctor would have a cigarette alight in his ashtray when he was asking you how you were.

As children we hated it.  To walk through the bar to go to school in the morning was awful. The smell of stale beer and the sweet smell of cigarettes made us gag.

Even with windows open, the extractor fans going and washing the curtains at regular intervals it did not get rid of the stale aroma that seemed to cling to everything.

It clung to you too.  After a weekend evening session, I would have to completely change all of my clothes and bathe and wash my hair.  We all did.

Mum and Dad chain smoked, but I don’t think they ever finished a cigarette, they would light up, then have to serve so the cigarette would burn away in an ashtray.

Dad decorated the bars every two years, completely stripping the wallpaper and replacing it. New curtains. Carpets cleaned. Ceilings washed and repainted.  I can see him washing the ceilings, they were orange with nicotine and the water was soon the colour of honey and as thick as treacle.  You could almost peel it off.

Customers were not very careful with their stubs either, so there would be burns in the carpets and furniture. Fortunately, the carpets and furniture would be dark in colour and multi patterned so as not to show the stains and burns too much.  But the linoleum and wooden floors in the public bars would all have the tell-tale orange smudges.

While we were in The Claremont Dad had heard that if you had a canopy around the servery, the smoke would be less likely to go behind the bar.  Smoke rises and would not go under this canopy. That was the theory anyway.  Yes, it did make a difference and would have been super if Mum, Dad and the bar staff hadn’t lit up under it.  Their smoke had nowhere to escape. 

When I worked behind the bar I was always in trouble for switching on the extractors and leaving them on for too long.  They were powerful, noisy and used lots of electricity.  They also caused quite a chill in the bars, because they not only sucked out the smoke they sucked out the warmth too.  So short bursts were the order of the day. I don’t think the customers really minded about the smoke it was just us non smokers it affected.  My eyes would stream, and I’d cough.  Air conditioning was in the future.  But I doubt many publicans would have had the money to install it anyway.

Cigarettes were quite a lucrative off sale too.  We would stock most brands and loose tobacco.  Cigars at Christmas.  While I’m on the subject of Off Sales, Dad always had boxes of chocolates and a few tins of Hamlet cigars for sale. Handy last minute presents or a sweetener if you have stayed late and are bit worse for wear.

The smoke from the bars would permeate upstairs too. My grandparents that lived with us gave up smoking after Grandad had to have an operation.  Stephen and I never smoked and Tony my elder brother rarely lit up.  Mum ironically, hated the smell of smoke too and would throw open the upstairs windows most mornings, freezing us all. Mum tried several times to give up but never managed more than a week.  Dad would have a bet every New Years Eve with the customers. He would pin up a board in the bar and customers would write down their guess how long he would last.  Sometimes he would mange six weeks or more.  The winner won a bottle of whiskey.  I think you had to pay to enter. Money went to whatever charity was going at the time.  It went with the charity penny column that would start every year too on the bar.  Often there would be a couple of pence in the change from a drink, so customers would dip the pennies in their beer and build this tower of money.  When it had reached a good height a celebrity would be asked to knock it down. I don’t think we ever had anyone well known but some of the big pubs would have people like Henry Cooper, the Beverly Sisters or a local comedian.  Then their pub would make the local paper.  It would be quite an evening.

As an adult I rarely went into a pub mainly because of the smoke. I was so glad when the ban on smoking in enclosed places came in in 2007.

*Pictures in this Smoking section from British photojournalist Thurston Hopkins