Notwithstanding the few examples given above, tobacconists, more than most tradesmen, seem to have continued to use signs that had at least some relevance to their trade.  Abel Drugger was a “tobacco-man,” i.e. a tobacco-seller in Ben Jonson’s play of “The Alchemist,” 1610, so that it is not very surprising to find the name used occasionally as a tobacconist’s sign.  Towards the end of the eighteenth century one Peter Cockburn traded as a tobacconist at the sign of the “Abel Drugger” in Fenchurch Street, and informed the public on the advertising papers in which he wrapped up his tobacco for customers that he had formerly been shopman at the Sir Roger de Coverley—­a notice which has preserved the name of another tobacconist’s sign borrowed from literature.  Seventeenth—­century London signs were the “Three Tobacco Pipes,” “Two Tobacco Pipes” crossed, and “Five Tobacco Pipes.”  At Edinburgh in the eighteenth century there were tobacconists who used two pipes crossed, a roll of tobacco and two leaves over two crossed pipes, and a roll of tobacco and three leaves.

The older tobacconists were wont to assert, says Larwood, that the man in the moon could enjoy his pipe, hence “the ‘Man in the Moon’ is represented on some of the tobacconists’ papers in the Banks Collection puffing like a steam engine, and underneath the words, ‘Who’ll smoake with ye Man in ye Moone?’” The Dutch, as every one knows, are great smokers, so a Dutchman has been a common figure on tobacconists’ signs.  In the eighteenth century a common device was three figures representing a Dutchman, a Scotchman and a sailor, explained by the accompanying rhyme: 

    We three are engaged in one cause,
    I snuffs, I smokes, and I chaws!

Larwood says that a tobacconist in the Kingsland Road had the three men on his sign, but with a different legend: 

    This Indian weed is good indeed,
    Puff on, keep up the joke
    ’Tis the best, ’twill stand the test,
      Either to chew or smoke.

The bill bearing this sign is in Banks’s Collection, 1750.  Another in the same collection, with a similar meaning but of more elaborate design, shows the three men, the central figure having his hands in his pockets and in his mouth a pipe from which smoke is rolling.  The man on the left advances towards this central figure holding out a pipe, above which is the legend “Voule vous de Rape.”  Above the middle man is “No dis been better.”  The third man, on the right, holds out, also towards the central figure, a tobacco-box, above which is the legend “Will you have a quid.”