Name/Title
Ashtrays. GlassEntry/Object ID
2022.2.85.127Description
The Big House at Malabar Farm has what may seem like an alarming number of ashtrays displayed in many of the rooms. These uncolored glass ashtrays are a small selection of those within the house.
Prior to 1964, when the United States Surgeon General published a report on the health effects of smoking, Americans used tobacco products at an increasing rate. National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion notes that the smoking rate peaked at 40% of American adults in 1964. During the decades leading up to that, the number of cigarettes smoked per capita also increased.
Unfortunately, Louis Bromfield died of cancer in 1956, eight years before the Surgeon General's report. The link between cancer and smoking was made in the 1940s and 1950s, but it was less publicized and publicly accepted prior to the 1964 report.