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This page is part of the Hoax Archive, a collection of history's most interesting and notorious deceptions categorized by theme and time period.
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The Chesterfield Leper
Date: 1934
Categories: Rumors and Legends, Gross-Out Hoaxes, 1930s
Categories: Rumors and Legends, Gross-Out Hoaxes, 1930s
A 1935 ad for Chesterfield cigarettes, captioned: "Machines like this -- new and modern in every respect -- make Chesterfields."
The Liggett and Meyers Tobacco Company, maker of Chesterfields, repeatedly denied the rumor, but to no avail. The company even arranged for the mayor of Richmond to issue a statement assuring the public that the Chesterfield factory had been investigated and no leper found working there. Still sales continued to decline.
The company suspected that the rumor was started by one of its competitors. However, it could never prove this. It offered a $25,000 reward to anyone who could help it locate the source of the rumor, but the source was not found.
A parallel rumor suggested that the rumor had been started by religious groups opposed to smoking.
Chesterfield ran advertisements that emphasized the clean, modern machines used to manufacture their cigarettes. Nevertheless, it took a full decade for the company to finally shake the rumor and for sales to fully recover.
History of the Rumor
The Chesterfield rumor was not the first time public fears had linked cigarettes with leprosy. The fear of lepers working in cigarette factories was an old one, dating well back into the nineteenth century. For instance, on June 12, 1882 the Pennsylvania Chester Times presented its readers with this warning:
A physician who has studied the disease says that it is dangerous to assume that it can only be contracted by actual contact. The very atmosphere in which a leper moves is contaminated. It can be caught by using a chair or room which has been occupied by one afflicted with the disease, or by using a drinking vessel or anything that has been touched by a leper. The street cars are a prolific source of the contagion. Lepers are employed in the cheap cigar and cigarette shops, and scores of instances of the disease are known to have arisen from smoking the articles made by their plague-stricken fingers.
During the 1940s, the leper rumor also became associated with Spud, the first menthol brand of cigarettes. Some sources claim that because of the rumor Spud went out of business within six months, but this is not true. Spud was actually acquired by Philip Morris.
During the Vietnam War a version of the rumor popped up among GIs. It was said that the marijuana cigarettes readily accessible in Saigon, and smoked by many soldiers, were rolled by the inmates of a leper colony. Supposedly the lepers performed the work in an assembly line process according to their handicaps. The sickest ones had the job of licking the wrappers to seal the joint. Some skeptical soldiers voiced suspicions that pentagon generals had started the rumor as part of an anti-drug campaign.
Links and References
- Conte, I. (December 29, 1970). "GIs in Vietnam solve boredom by smoking marijuana." Annapolis Evening Capital.
- Jacobson, D.J. (1948). The Affairs of Dame Rumor. New York. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.