above:
Charles Edward Lambert
" Nothing Left To Chance "
In this edition of A/N/B we'll have a brief look into the London firm of Lambert & Butler - although they were a very large and powerful company, not many (if any really) of their pipe tobacco brands live on in our romantic legends, yet they were a massive formidable force in the earlier years of the UK tobacco industry.
The firm of Lambert & Butler was founded in Clerkenwell's St. John Street circa 1834 by Charles Lambert ( the son of a snuff miller from Surrey) and Charles Butler, when they were twenty-one and twenty-two respectively.
In 1836 the company moved to Drury Lane, where they long remained.
Their business enjoyed extreme success, and by the time 1870 they had a capitalization of £87,200!
In 1901 Lambert & Butler was one of the original thirteen companies (they were still the 2nd largest of them all, only behind Wills of Bristol) which combined to form the Imperial Tobacco Company - a necessary step to fend off aggression from the wild-eyed American, James B. Duke.
For more info on that topic,
see here:
The Tobacco War in Great Britain
by Lincoln Springfield
https://books.google.com/books?id=I6g2AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA820&dq=%22the+Tobacco+War+in+Great+Britain%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLsui1-eDKAhXG2SYKHfJjD1oQ6AEISjAJ#v=onepage&q=%22the%20Tobacco%20War%20in%20Great%20Britain%22&f=false
Here is an extremely condensed version:
The year 1901 saw the development of a ferocious trade conflict – to become known as the Tobacco Wars – fought by the American tycoon James B. Duke, founder of the American Tobacco Company (ATC), against the UK manufacturers, some of whom he had tried to buy up.
In defense against his predations, thirteen British companies met on September 19th in Birmingham at the Queen's Hotel to form the Imperial Tobacco Company (ITC), in which Wills, now by far the largest of them, invested 7 million pounds, with the next largest,Lambert & Butler putting in three quarters of a million.
The two giants ATC and ITC then competed frenetically, employing many marketing ruses involving free gifts, price manipulation and, especially, the extraordinarily lucrative promotion of collectable sets of cigarette cards.
By September 1902 ATC was wearying of the fight and a deal was struck between the parties as to their future spheres of influence and collaboration. Out of this agreement there emerged a new grouping, British-American Tobacco (BAT).
ITC continued to operate as such and in 1903 its board set up an executive committee to manage the group; its six initial members included Charles Edward (I) and Walter Butler.
Now,
regarding one of my favorite L&B brands...
One of my favorite writers, Sir Compton Mackenzie, was very fond of Warlock Rich Dark Flake, as seen in this exceprt from his book
Sublime Tobacco...
"In 1929 I discovered in Scotland the virtues of Lambert and Butler's Warlock, and I have smoked it ever since. Apparently it is too strong for the less hardy Londoner in whose city it is produced. The Scots are the people who appreciate this noble dark flake, of which I smoke about an ounce and a quarter a day. I had a suspicion that for a time the Warlock of today, which has to rely on Empire-grown leaf for some of its make-up, had not quite the quality of the Warlock produced before dollars became such a headache, but I have been able to satisfy myself that the Warlock of the present day is, in fact, now indistinguishable from the original Warlock made from Kentucky tobacco. I used to hear it said that the secret of Warlock was that it had been soaked in rum! I need hardly add that this was just a fairy-tale, but that such a fairy-tale could win any credence may indicate the satisfaction that the smoker of Warlock derived from his favourite tobacco. I may add that I have several times been asked in railway-carriages what tobacco I was smoking, so agreeable to the nose was the smell of it."
Otherwise,
none of their brands ever really made it into the pantheon of our mythic pipelore.
Lambert & Butler largely fell out of view until 1979 with a major relaunch of the cigarette brand.
In the late 1990's, some very English advertising swelled the success of the brand still further. The campaign featured a modern-day toff, Lambert, and his unflappable butler called, as you will have guessed, Butler.Very often seen on large billboards,
like this:
...but in January 2003, the lights went out, and the maps were rolled up on all UK tobacco advertising, the two characters enjoyed their final exchange, appearing with their faces blurred as if in a crime report.
Butler observed, "It seems we've been outlawed, sir."
above ciggy info gleaned from:
The Cigarette Book: The History and Culture of Smoking
:
Now,
the assorted tins and other related ephemera follows:
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