ee, who sold tobacco about 1730 "at Ye
Golden Tobacco Roll in Panton Street near Leicester Fields," is an
elaborate production. Hogarth in the earlier period of his career as
an engraver engraved many shop-bills, and this particular bill is
usually attributed to him, though the attribution has been disputed.
There is a copy of the bill in the British Museum, and in the
catalogue of the prints and drawings in the National Collection Mr.
Stephens thus describes it: "It is an oblong enclosing an oval, the
spandrels being occupied by leaves of the tobacco plant tied in
bundles; the above title (Richard Lee at Ye Golden Tobacco Roll in
Panton Street near Leicester Fields) is on a frame which encloses the
oval. Within the latter the design represents the interior of a room,
with ten gentlemen gathered near a round table on which is a bowl of
punch; several of the gentlemen are smoking tobacco in long pipes; one
of them stands up on our right and vomits; another, who is
intoxicated, lies on the floor by the side of a chair; a fire of wood
burns in the grate; on the wall hangs two pictures ... three men's
hats hang on pegs on the wall." Altogether this is an interesting and
suggestive design, but hardly in the taste likely to commend itself to
present day tradesmen.

A roll of tobacco, it may be noted, was a common form of payment to
the Fleet parsons for their scoundrelly services. Pennant, writing in
1791, describes how these men hung out their frequent signs of a male
and female hand conjoined, with the legend written below: "Marriages
performed within." Before his shop walked the parson--"a squalid,
profligate figure, clad in a tattered plaid nightgown, with a fiery
face, and ready to couple you for a dram of gin, or roll of tobacco."

Combinations of the roll in tobacconists' signs occur occasionally. In
1660 there was a "Tobacco Roll and Sugar Loaf" at Gray's Inn Gate,
Holborn. In 1659 James Barnes issued a farthing token from the "Sugar
Loaf and Three Tobacco Rolls" in the Poultry, London. The "Sugar Loaf"
was the principal grocer's sign, and so when it is found in
combination with the tobacco roll at this time it may reasonably be
assumed that the proprietor of the business was a grocer who was also
a tobacconist.

Before the end of the seventeenth century, however, the signs were
ceasing to have any necessary association with the trade carried on
under them, and tobacconists are found with shop-signs which had no
r