Vintage Photos Of Children Puffing On Cigarettes

Newsies selling papers and smoking, St. Louis, Missouri, 1910.Lewis Hine/Wikimedia Commons Smoking boy posing with chicken, Quebec, Canada, 1920.Wikimedia Commons Burmese child smoking tobacco and herb cheroot, 1912.D.A. Almja/Wikimedia Commons Newsies in St. Louis, Missouri, 1910.Lewis Hine/Wikimedia Commons Boy smoking at a playground, Netherlands, 1950.J. van Eijk/Flickr Little boy smoking while urinating on the street, Naples, Italy, 1944.Lieutenant Wayne Miller/Wikimedia Commons Kansas City, Missouri, 1973.Kenneth Palk/National Archives Boys and girls smoking, South Africa, 1936.National Anthropological Archives/Cape Times Newsies outside a pool hall, St. Louis, Missouri, 1910.Lewis Hine/Library of Congress A fisherman’s son smokes during target practice, Bayou Gauche, Louisiana, 1972.John Messina/National Archives Little boy has a smoke to celebrate the liberation of the Netherlands during World War II, 1945.Willem van de Poll/Wikimedia Commons Boys smoke near shack with Capitol dome in the distance, Washington, D.C., 1908.Charles Weller/New York Public Library Maori boy smokes while talking to a girl, Rotorua, New Zealand, 1895.William Henry Jackson/Library of Congress Romani man lights a little boy’s cigarette with his own, United States, 1937.Carlos de Wender-Funaro/Smithsonian Institution Naked boy smokes on the street, Jaro, Philippines, 1900.Library of Congress Italian-American boy smokes on Spruce St., Providence, Rhode Island, 1912.Lewis Hine/Library of Congress Russia, 1941.Bruno Plenik/Wikimedia Commons Messenger boy with cigarette, Schenectady, New York, 1910.Lewis Hine/Library of Congress Native Innu boy smoking a cigarette, Quebec, Canada, 1925.Frederick Johnson/Smithsonian Institution Street pavers take a smoke break, 1900.Wikimedia Commons Red Cross nurse gives injured Mexican boy a cigarette, 1918.National Archives/American Red Cross Messenger boys smoking on the sidewalk, Birmingham, Alabama, 1910.Lewis Hine/Wikimedia Commons

Like this gallery?
Share it:

When Cigarettes Were For Kids View Gallery

The narrator of Horatio Alger's rags-to-riches post-Civil War American classic, Ragged Dick (1868), offered perhaps the best, most sympathetic description of a contemporary epidemic almost unthinkable in the 21st century: childhood addiction to cigarettes.

"Men are frequently injured by smoking, and boys always," Alger wrote, specifically referring to the "newsboys and boot-blacks" particularly susceptible to the habit. "Exposed to the cold and wet they find that it warms them up, and the self-indulgence grows upon them. It is not uncommon to see a little boy, too young to be out of his mother’s sight, smoking with all the apparent satisfaction of a veteran smoker."

The remaining decades of the 19th century only made it easier for American kids to get their hands on cigarettes, with machine-assisted production contributing, in fact, to soaring tobacco consumption nationwide.

Meanwhile, the lack of child labor laws meant that many American children — particularly in urban centers — lived a largely unsupervised life away from home, like Alger's newsies and shoe-shine boys, free to experiment with smoking.

By the early 20th century, the U.S. government was brazenly pro-smoking — completely ignoring tobacco in the Food and Drug Act of 1906, for example — and even including cigarettes in rations for young troops during World War I. Lung cancer, after all, was still only being diagnosed post-mortem, and the immediate health risks of cigarette smoking were still unclear.

Even after legislation regulated child labor following the Great Depression — taking kids out of the workplace and bringing them nearer to the watchful eyes of their guardians — the health risks of cigarettes were still understated at best and totally ignored at worst. It wasn't until the Surgeon General's landmark 1964 study that public opinion began to shift, but even then the shift was slight.

For example, cigarette advertising on TV — even when kids were still awake to see it — continued until 1971, when tobacco companies agreed to halt them — as long as the anti-smoking coalition ceased its ads, as well. Smoking rates among adults and children have steadily declined ever since, without even the slightest, flukey uptick in either adults or kids smoking.

The vintage photos of kids smoking above capture a more naive time. Not only in the U.S., but across the globe, they highlight an era when children picking up the habit was met with amusement more than condemnation, as if they were wearing their daddy’s shoes or mommy’s necklace: something they maybe weren’t ready for, but would be, with time.

Intrigued by these vintage photos of kids smoking? Next, have a look at some vintage cigarette ads that are now hilariously, tragically absurd. Then, view 23 of Lewis Hine's child labor photographs from the early 20th century.

ncG1vNJzZmiZnKHBqa3TrKCnrJWnsrTAyKeeZ5ufonystcOsZKyln6C2r7M%3D