hatters, pawnbrokers and other tradesmen all used the same sign at various dates in the eighteenth century.  But side by side with this indiscriminate and unnecessary use of the sign there existed a continuous association of the “Black Boy” with the tobacco trade.  A tobacconist named Milward lived at the “Black Boy” in Redcross Street, Barbican, in 1742; and many old tobacco papers show a black boy, or sometimes two, smoking.  Mr. Holden MacMichael, in his papers on “The London Signs” says:  “Mrs. Skinner, of the old-established tobacconist’s opposite the Law Courts in the Strand, possessed, about the year 1890, two signs of the ‘Black Boy,’ appertaining, no doubt, to the old house of Messrs. Skinner’s on Holborn Hill, of the front of which there is an illustration in the Archer Collection in the Print Department of the British Museum, where the black boy and tobacco-rolls are depicted outside the premises.”  The “Black Boy,” indeed, continued in use by tobacconists until the nineteenth century was well advanced.  A tobacconist had a shop “uppon Wapping Wall” in 1667 at the sign of the “Black Boy and Pelican.”

Other significant early tobacconists’ signs were “Sir Walter Raleigh,” “The Virginian” and “The Tobacco Roll.”  “Sir Walter,” as the reputed introducer of tobacco, was naturally chosen as a sign, and his portrait adorns several shop-bills in the Banks Collection.  The American Indians, represented under the figure of “The Virginian,” and the negroes were hopelessly confused by the early tobacconists, with results which were sometimes surprising from an ethnological point of view.  As the first tobacco imported into this country came from Virginia, a supposed “Virginian” was naturally adopted as a tobacco-seller’s sign at an early date.  An “Indian” or a “Negro” or a figure which was a combination of both, was commonly represented wearing a kilt or a girdle of tobacco leaves, a feathered head-dress, and smoking a pipe.  A tobacco-paper, dating from about the time of Queen Anne, bears rudely engraved the figure of a negro smoking, and holding a roll of tobacco in his hand.  Above his head is a crown; behind are two ships in full sail, with the sun just appearing from the right-hand corner above.  The foreground shows four little black boys planting and packing tobacco, and below them is the name of the ingenious tradesman—­“John Winkley, Tobacconist, near ye Bridge, in the Burrough, Southwark.”  Sixty years or so ago a wooden figure, representing a negro with a gilt loin-cloth and band with feathered head, and sometimes with a tobacco roll, was still a frequent ornament of tobacconists’ shops.

The “Tobacco Roll,” either alone or in various combinations, was one of the commonest of early tobacconists’ signs, and was in constant use for a couple of centuries.  It may still be occasionally seen at the present time in the form of the “twist” with alternate brown or black and yellow coils, which up to quite a recent date was a tolerably frequent adornment of tobacconists’