The Princess Mary 1914 Christmas Gift, Brass Box
Date1914
Dimensions8.5 x 13 x 3 cm
Credit LineGift of the Estate of Dorothy Luney, London, Ontario, 1993.
Object number1993.045.001
Label TextThis Princess Mary’s gift box once held cigarettes or chocolate. In November 1914, Princess Mary, the daughter of King George V and Queen Mary, established a fund so that every man and woman in uniform would receive a box like this on Christmas Day, 1914. Those that officers and men received contained a pipe, a lighter, an ounce of tobacco, and twenty cigarettes. Cigarettes also formed part of soldiers’ weekly rations. When soldiers returned home, they continued to smoke cigarettes instead of cigars. By this time, cigarettes suggested male sociability, modernity, and middle-class respectability.
NameBox, Gift
1955-1971
