Is there only one recipe?

Wilson’s of Sharrow doesn’t make Dr Rumney’s. There are a few versions though. Which one are you talkng about? Show a photo if you can.

I don’t mean to be argumentive but I have a can of Wilsons of Sharrows Dr Rumney’s right here in my pocket

I don’t have a cam at the present but yeah I would definitely set up a pic

Interesting…their website doesn’t mention it at all, under either brand.  Nor does a google search turn up anything related.  I’d love to see a pic of that tin.

i did just find an article that says that Wilsons has bought the recipes known as Dr Rumney’s.   yeah that’s what I thought since I couldn’t find any information about it.

arrgh it’s frustrating to be without a cam

here is the article.  LOL I just copied the whole thing

Wilson(Sharrow) sold their recipe for Latakia,
which they called “Cyprus”, years ago to another firm,
because they said “it smelled so awful we just didn’t
want it any more”. They were surprised when I told
them it was still being marketed somewhere as
“Wilsons’ Latakia”, and giving them a bad name.
H & G
Wilsons left Sheffield for Liverpool some years ago and
were bought out by Hedges (Imperial Tobacco). I am
told they no longer make Dr Rumneys though I see that
are advertised as selling it by Green’s of Leeds.
HOWEVER Wilson’s Sharrow have the genuine Dr. Rumney’s
recipes, and they manufacture the various Dr. Rumneys as
their S.M. Gold, S.M. Blue and S.M. Green. They
manufacture Dr. Rumneys aniseed as their Aniseed
Extra.
Wilson’s Sharrow also manufacture H & G’s Top Mill snuff
under the name S.P.100.
It was Illingworths, now
burnt down and defunct, who had the Dr. Rumneys recipes
which were bought by H & G Wilsons and passed by them
to Wilson’s Sharrow.
A good Latakia is
manufactured by S. Gawith’s.
(I hope the above clears all
this up and will enable members to get their Dr
Rumneys (which I admittedly dislike intensely, but à
chacun son gout). I have this information from the most
hepful and cordial and long experienced snuff blender,
Wilson Sharrow’s Mill Manager.)
Regards to all,
Griff.

Is there even a source for this article? Looks like a combination of nonsense and hearsay. I’ve never heard of H&G Wilson, only J&H Wilson. I’ve never heard of SM Green. Some of that contradicts some established history too.

http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.tobacco.snuff/314

Looks less than credible at best.  I also think someone went out on a limb making those statements.  

I call shenanigans.  

All I know is that I got it from my local Pipe and Tobacco store.  Not sure what the shannanigans would be.  I doubt that this is somehow fake.  I have another tin of Wilsons.  Label is the same.  Perhaps its an American market thing.  I have no idea.  I just thought I might find some info among so many snuffers

Well, you’ve come to the right place for expertise. We have a lot of information here, and a lot of expert posters. Show us some photos and we’ll unravel the mystery.

There is no “American market” since we all order our snuff from the UK.  

So does your tin say “SM Gold/Blue/Green” or does it say “Rumney’s”?  

it says Dr. Rumney’s.  yeah the American thing was just a guess LOL

I have there number and am going to call and hopefull clear this thing up

http://www.northtrek.plus.com/Snuff.html

There is a little bit on Rumney and Illingsworth who made the snuff.  

@thesymbolist:

Tell me if the snuff you have is in any of the pictures:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=Wilsons+of+Sharrow+Rumneys+snuff&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1600&bih=775&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=wOpPT4_xLIGxsAKPmtC1Dg#um=1&hl=en&safe=off&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=Rumney%27s+Snuff&pbx=1&oq=Rumney%27s+Snuff&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=156124l158651l0l158791l14l14l0l7l7l0l234l812l5.1.1l7l0&gs_l=img.3…156124l158651l0l158791l14l14l0l7l7l0l234l812l5j1j1l7l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=6322df9f27b9e94d&biw=1600&bih=775

Alas I don’t see it.  I’m over at a friend’s house who has a cam, and I’ll see if she will take a picture of it here in a few.

Here is a picture of it.  Briar and Bean in Evansville IN is where I got it.

I’ve never seen it before.

What the hell… wow.  Never seen that before.  

My call for shenanigans is revoked.  

Does that shop have any more?  

No, I just checked Greens of Leeds and checked Wilsons of Sharrows Catalogue. No Rumney’s or SM Green. Maybe it’s just an old label.

It’s possible @Theatre.  It is still strange though.  

@cstokes…as far as I know he’s trying to keep it in stock as there are quite a few here in Evansville who have been trying to get Wilsons through him for quite some time.

LOL now that’s settled …my question was, what is in it?  Is it just Menthol and Eucalyptus or is there traditionally Aniseed too.  I thought I smelled Aniseed anyway.

Whew, I have no idea.  The Rumneys from South Africa is menthol and eucalyptus and a coarse grind.  The Rumneys Export from South Africa is a finer grind with the same ingredients but there are different variations in this line, McGahey sells them here:

http://www.the-tobacconist.co.uk/snuff/snuff_search.asp

If there is aniseed in it, maybe WoS just renamed it to Aniseed & Eucalyptus rather than keeping the Rumneys name? SM Gold and I think SM Blue also has eucalyptus in it.

That post was made by Professor Phillips A Griffiths. I doubt there’s another person alive that knows as much about Wilsons of Sharrow or Fribourg & Treyer than Griff. He’s who WoS contact when they need historical information regarding their own brands or recipes.

that was a interesting article on Rumney Cstokes.  I love snuff literature

@snuffpub If that is so, then who is H&G Wilson? What is S.M. Green? Dr. Rumney’s was made by Illingworth of Kendal, which was later bought out by Imperial, so it all just doesn’t add up. If that is the renowned professor, he has a good memory, but a lot of that info is contradictory. No one is above error. @thesymbolist thanks for the pic; quite bizzarre. Never seen that before. Hopefully the answer will present itself.

@Xander:

Griff often refers to J&H Wilson as H&G Wilson. Henry and George Wilson were in charge of Top Mill when they sold it to Imperial back in '53.

SM Green is the original name of Menthol Plus. It was changed back in the (I think) late 70’s early 80’s.

Not all snuff information can be found in 30 seconds of googling.

Anyone have a price list from WoS showing Rumney’s?

@PhilipS

I paid $6 for mine but that probably was due to all the tax

I’m still not understanding why multiple companies have the license to make the same snuff?  How is it that WoS can make the 3 different Rumney’s Export flavors as the same time as Swedish Match?  Or Imperial making Top Mill as the same time as WoS?  Odd.  

@gillybean 

You used to work at the mill, can you confirm or deny any of this?  

judging by the size of the health warning the tin couldnt be that old

i am calling it chinese counterfeit

diffrent copyright in diffrent countries maybe?

It all comes down to licensing. Company A buys Company B who also owns Company C. Company A sells Company C to Company D, but Company B still retains some territorial rights so at the end of the day you have companies A,B,C and D all manufacturing different snuffs under the same brand name. (Or the same recipe under different brand names).

You’d be surprised how many Wilsons of Sharrow snuffs are manufactured worldwide that you never hear about. Ever heard of Chatham Street, Honey & Camphor, Rum & Lemonade, and Kettle Black? These are all WoS blends in current production that you can’t even turn up in a google search. That’s when fellows like PhilipS and Professor Griffiths and others with a wealth of arcane knowledge come into play.

It bothers me that someone presented a brand of snuff that may not be well-known, but certainly exists, only to be told that there was no such thing and photographic evidence was needed. Then to be told that Griff’s ruminations were a “combination of nonsense and hearsay” is a terrible insult to the only man I know that has been involved in the British snuff scene since the 1940s. I once asked him why he didn’t post here, and he gave an answer that pretty much blamed threads like this.

I found a really interesting one too.

It’s not that hard…I’m just sayin’.  It can look even better if you spend more than 15 minutes and really care about the authentic look.

No accusations…just food for thought.

the question though is why. There really isn’t anything anyone could gain by making a forgery of a snuff. Well not of a label on a tin like that. If anyone is faking something I don’t think it’s the poster. Maybe the shop or some other company or who knows.

Knockoff snuff?  I have no idea…I just like photoshopping stuff on company time.

@snuffpub Sorry, but I remain a committed skeptic in all things. I still am regarding this issue.

I suppose if the political propaganda were left out of the STE I might pick up a copy.  

@snuffpub:  You can’t blame us for not knowing this.  The only reason you are privy to it is for your publication, so you have a monetary interest to keep the information silent only to come on here and bash members for not knowing every single snuff on Mother Earth.

I’m not bashing anyone, stokes. I just think it’s silly when you guys attack someone for knowing something you don’t. No offense, but I’ll take a 90 year old guy who’s been involved with the snuff culture since before you were born any day over some guy with an internet connection and a chip on his shoulder.

I don’t have a vested interest in snuff knowledge. But I’m not going to skeptically refuse to believe something doesn’t exist just because I can’t link to it on the internet.

And I’m sure thesymbolist photoshopped a Wilson’s tin just to start a conversation about something as trivial as Doc Rumney and so guys like Xander can remain skeptical.

The only agenda we promote in The Ephemeris is anti-ignorance and free distribution of knowledge. If that’s too political for some folks, we understand. There’s always Archie comics and Sears Catalogs for the rest of the population. 

easy now, let not fight over this.

You’re right, we shouldn’t fight about this. I just felt that since Griff wasn’t here to defend himself I should at least speak my peace. I’ll bury the hatchet now and apologize if I offended anyone.

Griff has not posted here. All I saw was a cut and paste from some undocumented source. Can’t blame me for being skeptical about that, can you?

“I slept with faith, and found a corpse in my arms upon awakening. I drank and danced all night with doubt, and found her a virgin in the morning.” - Aleister Crowley. You can’t blame someone for asking for proof of something they were unaware of.

I don’t blame anyone for wishing to investigate a subject as far as they can, but I balk when sources are attacked for no good reason other than “this doesn’t fit in with what I think I know.” Such is ignorance.

What a fascinating discussion. I had a tin of the original in the red flip top with Rumney himself on the lid. He looked positively insane, glowering out over the years with his wing collar. I suspect he treated his patients with lots of enemas and cold water baths, when he was not slaughtering hogs that is.

Anybody ready any good stories about Liliput lately?

As I said in another thread, lot of info about snuff is not online but in libraries and oral history collections. I’m still on my way to Trinity College to do some research…

@AllanH Trinity College? I’m suddenly envious

The Arents Collection over at the New York Public Library is another great place to dig up tobacco info. I regret having only spent a few hours there (mainly to research the Devoe and Red Seal brands), but the collection is massive. It would take one years to go through everything. I meant to stop by the last month when we were in NYC but we went around photographing old snuff mill locations instead.

Well guys this has been an interesting thing to say the least.  And no, I haven’t the slightest idea how to photoshop nor, as I believe it has been mentioned, would profit me in the least to pull a gag with the a snuff.  Now that would be dry humour.  Thanks for all the comments, but me thinks I’ll think more carefully before asking any more theoretically innocent questions. LMAO.

Oh and the Drunk Goat thing was hilarious.

You certainly sparked an interesting debate, that’s for sure, lol.

@thesymbolist Maybe you can take up a collection from the non-believers and send them each a tin of WoS Rumney’s so they can further speculate as to how you concocted such an interesting forgery.

no doubt

You guys are very condescending. This attitude also comes across strongly in the ephemeris. It’s quite sad really. 

I think it’s sarcasm. I find sTe informative.

@Juxtaposer Thanks for reading! People typically love us until we criticize something or someone they like. Then we go from “cutting edge satirists” to “condescending pricks.” Which never fails to amaze me, as we’re probably the most self-depreciating magazine in printed history.

@snuffbrant I’d say 90% of our readers understand sarcasm and “get” our brand of humor while the other 10% are disgusted with the fact that we don’t approach the subject of snuff taking with the kid gloves and hushed reverence that it typically commands. They wonder why we would ever poke fun at our readership or spoof the pomposity that runs so rampant in our hobby. Needless to say, if you consider yourself a snuff snob and you’re horrified with the idea that anyone would dare satirize a pastime that is as inherently pretentious as that of snuff taking, well… the Ephemeris probably isn’t for you. If, on the other hand, you appreciate a good sarcastic ribbing and love reading about snuff and tobacco history without being bored to death in the process, then welcome! 

As much as we hate to lose readers, we’d hate worse for you to spend your hard-earned money on something that makes you sad or upset. Lord knows I stopped reading Playboy as soon as they started that stupid joke page. Why would I want to read party jokes when I’m looking at nude women? They’re so out of touch with their readership.

Sorry that this thread has gotten off track. If you’d like to criticize the sTe any further, drop us a line at letters@STephemeris.com.

I still have a problem with the label on that tin.  There are inconsistencies that I noticed when I first saw the picture, and there are some that I didn’t notice until I got zoomed way into the image.  My professional gut says that something is amiss with the label, but who, why, or what caused it I can’t speculate on.  I could also be entirely and completely wrong, and I can accept that.  It wouldn’t be the first time.  I also don’t want to keep feeding the mosh pit that seems to have formed.

@snuffpub,STE is an excellent publication! The sense of humor it contains and the historical research are my favorite aspects of the magazine. I’m glad ya’ll had the balls to stick your neck out and start it, thanks man! 

i agree, @MrColcannon … see, @snuffpub … folks do enjoy it … and you need to keep on doing what you’re doing.  In a world inundated with Cigar and Wine magazines, etc., it’s good to know a forum that is dedicated to snuff can actually find a magazine that is dedicated to the history of this great “hobby” … i think any representation we have in general that tries to illuminate the subject, is good for all.  and entertaining to boot!  cheers for sTe!  you are a sponsor on this forum … and we should support our sponsors.  doesn’t mean we can’t disagree with sTe or try to gather more information that we may question … just that if the long view is taken, we can all find some common ground in the snuff itself.  

EDIT … *everything* i know about snuff comes from the good folks on this forum, the sTe, and snuffpub and BigMick themselves … for this i am appreciative. 

I’ve kind of skimmed through this, so forgive me if I have re-stated anything; but, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find different companies manufacturing things listed by Wilsons, yes because of licensing issues, but also, a probable slowness in the snuff industry to cotton on. I can imagine that their inner workings, especially an old firm like Wilsons, run on 19th century clock work. They can’t even label their own wares with 100% accuracy. Bless em  :))

Filek Says:  WoS never manufactured the Dr. Rumney’s. 

Then the question remains why is it under their label?

My tobaccanist has an entire batch with this label

I would tell you but 30 seconds of googling won’t give me the answer    =))

Maybe a printer and a little glue is behind all this mischief? Maybe the tobacconist had an old bulk jar of rumneys and wanted to sell it, and WoS was the easiest tin to make ! B-)

@thesymbolist You can ask your tobacconist for the box the snuffs came in, that would be better, or ask where he ordered the stock from. That would be the best bet before we have to get Scooby and the gang to solve this mystery.

OK lets get one thing straight…there was never a G & H Wilson or George and Henry Wilson as someone quoted earlier. It is J & H Wilson or JOSEPH and Henry Wilson Ltd of Westbrook Mill Sheffield. Wilsons’s & Co was the company hey broke away from and started their won factory (Top Mill) in 1833.

Now Dr Rumneys, this was an Illingworth product and Illingworths were taken over by J & H Wilson and we manufactured this up till closure in 1989, then it went onto Liverpool I wouldn’t think it’s made any longer. I have never seen the tin which is displayed above, the Dr Rumneys we made had a pic of a man with white hair and a bright blue jacket.

Hope this helps

@Gill, yes, the company has always been J & H Wilson, nobody is questioning that. George and Henry Wilson were cousins, the grandson and grand-nephew of either Joseph or Henry who started the mill in 1833. They owned J&H Wilson until 1953 when it was sold to Imperial and went on to live quiet lives in Leeds, if I’m not mistaken.

@CStokes, keep googling, I’m sure you’ll find it.

He keeps them in the box, and they are in view from the counter.  So for that I can testify.

@Theatre…the tins are exaclty the same as the ones I ordered from Mars about a year ago.  I just cannot imagine why in the world anyone would want to commit fraud with a product that just isn’t a fantastic seller.  He makes most of his money with cigars as he has a rather sizable humidor, probably one of the biggest within some distance.

You can edit your own posts by clicking on edit and re-typing, rather than adding a second post.

Filek received this directly from Wilsons:

_"Hi Maciej,

We never manufactured the Dr. Rumney’s but we did supply it. It was available 
in 3 flavours - named simply Blue, Green & Brown. Manufacture was 
discontinued about 10 years ago. 

We make equivalents to them all - the Dr. Rumney’s Green is our Aniseed Extra, 
the Brown is our SM Brown and the Blue is our SM Blue (SM meaning Sharrow 
Medicated). If you would like to order please register with our website (link 
below) and place your order. "

I think they were refering to Swedish Match._

Glad you included the part about them asking for your order, lol. I wonder does this solve the mystery?

I suppose.  Started off as a contract brand and they simply lifted the recipe and marketed it under different names.  

It seems like they’re saying they supplied it, not contracted to make it. Presumably that measn they acquired it in bulk and then distributed it along with their own products. I find it odd that they would “supply” it in their own label tins. I don’t find it odd that they would create equivalants.

So did they just put it in these tins for a very short period?  That seems to be the next logical question.

I have the Dr Rumneys form WoS which I bought from Lil Brown Smoke Shop. It has an item number on the backside of the tin, but its covered w/ a sticker. It seems like the older style, tons of menthol, eucalyptus, medium grind, reddish color. I looked at Lil Brown’s website the other day and they still carry. Perhaps its old stock. I’ve never seen any of the other types mentioned above, but had the original back in the 1970s in Scotland.

I can shed some light on this. As far as we know the Dr. Rumneys brand is owned by Imperial Tobacco, except for the rights to the brand in the USA. These are owned by our USA distributor. The WoS Dr. Rumneys that is available in the USA is made by us here in Sheffield under license and is only available in the USA. mrmanos, the code you see on the bottom of the tin is a production code which specifies the day and period (am or pm) that the tin was filled. We introduced this code only this year so the two digits before the A or B will be 13, this indicates the snuff was packaged in 2013. I hope you will find this useful. James Hanson Wilsons & Co. (Sharrow) Ltd.

So the Wos DR. Rumney is available still but only in certain american smoke shops?

@‌Up_to_snuff If you are still interested, you can buy it here, $3.85 for a 10g tin. http://www.lilbrown.com/p-8877-wilsons-dr-rumney-snuff-10gtin.aspx I’d caution though as I bought some IHT 22 from them and it had lost all resemblance to a toast snuff and seemed more like plain brown dirt. It seemed really really old! Correction: shipping isn’t free.

@Grant That is even more interesting! I thought since PACT I didn’t think any snuff or, cigarettes could be mailed.

I got mine at Lil’ Brown Smoke Shack too. As Nigel mentioned I used to empty those 1/2 oz red flip top tins at an alarming rate. The Wilsons version is pretty close if my failing scent memory serves.

Lilbrown in the U.S. still sells WoS Dr Rumney’s online.

Hello all! This is my first post in Snuffhouse and I’m new to snuff (pipe smoker historically).

My question to the forum is this: Does quality from tin to tin of the same snuff differ much?

I went through my first tin of WoS Dr. Rumneys and quickly bought another from a different tobacco shop when I began to run low. The contents of the second tin were quite different than the first. It is the same color and consistency, but the can scent, in-nose experience, and overall flavor is just very flat compared to the first tin. And I have both tins, so I can compare each and I’m sure I’m not simply experiencing some kind of immediate nostalgic effect.

They both have the same number on the back of the tin: TX-T1-15008. It seems like they are from the same tinning date based on an earlier post in this thread.

This all seems strange to me and I’m just curious if this is an anomaly or something to be expected?

Cheers!

It seems strange that they would be so different.

Lil Brown in Washington state carries Wilsons Dr Rumneys, and it has a label thats a different style than most of the current WoS snuffs. And it also has a label on the back with a different importer’s name. Hmmm… Maybe its new, old stock, I don’t know. But its very good, complex menthol with eucalyptus, citrus, maybe some other scents I can’t discern. I tried the Swedish Match stuff in the plastic tap box, but the Wilson’s is much better IMO. Anyone interested should go to the Lil Brown website and check it out. The picture on their website is different than the tins I’ve received. The label is different.

I got this from lil browns when they still shipped to PA. It has an  aniseed scent.

they sell it at Rems Tobacco in Grand Junction, CO.

what did you think of it,@basementshamen ?

and @mrmanos?

Dr. John Rumney (born 1796) was a general
practitioner at Stainmore Brough in Westmorland. He is credited with making the
first medicated snuff which would be recognisable as such today. As
Mentholyptus suggests, his mixture contained menthol and eucalyptus. He
purchased large quantities of raw snuff from Samuel Gawith and over time
perfected his recipe which was offered to his patients. One of the commercial
travellers employed by Samuel Gawith the second was John Thomas Illingworth who
often visited Brough. Before setting up
his own manufactory in 1866 he married the good doctor

I don’t know what’s happened here. I wrote a long post on the history of Dr. Rumney’s snuff but most of it is missing.

Damn, I love reading the history of snuffs and yeah, your post is cut off after a paragraph.

Griff often refers to J&H Wilson as H&G Wilson. Henry and George Wilson were in charge of Top Mill when they sold it to Imperial back in '53.

The ownership of J&H Wilsons passed into the hands of the Thompson and Harland families’ way back in 1895. A nephew of the two surviving Harland brothers (both bachelors) into whose hands the business would pass was killed with the RAF. With no one left to carry on the business it was the Harlands who sold out to Imperial in 1953 and not the Westbrook branch of the Wilson family.

Wilson(Sharrow) sold their recipe for Latakia, which they called “Cyprus”, years ago to another firm, because they said “it smelled so awful we just didn’t want it any more”. They were surprised when I told them it was still being marketed somewhere as “Wilsons’ Latakia”, and giving them a bad name.

Interesting comment! Cyprus, based on Latakia, was introduced by Sharrow’s Mark Chaytor as one of the Grand Sharrow Range in celebration of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 – and was considerably more expensive than standard. Like their Grimstone’s Eye Snuff facsimile (also part of the range along with Brunswick, Burgundy, Grand Cairo Jasmine, Extra Crumbs of Comfort and Extra Menthol) it hasn’t been available for a very long time as, according to a trade journal, it didn’t sell well. All the other offerings in the Grand Sharrow Range are still available, I believe, and prices have been equalised. I’ve never heard of a snuff sold as ‘Wilsons’ Latakia’. Has anyone else?

Dr. John Rumney (born 1796) was a general practitioner at Stainmore Brough in Westmorland. He is credited with making the first medicated snuff which would be recognisable as such today. As Mentholyptus suggests, his mixture contained menthol and eucalyptus. He purchased large quantities of raw snuff from Samuel Gawith and over time perfected his recipe which was offered to his patients. One of the commercial travellers employed by Samuel Gawith the second was John Thomas Illingworth who often visited Brough. Before setting up his own manufactory in 1866 he married the good doctor

I don’t know why my post from eight years ago was truncated, but I meant to say that John Thomas Illingworth married the good doctor’s daughter, Catherine Rumney in 1866, and not the doctor himself as suggested by the cut-off