Trichinopoly cigar

Trichinopoly cigar, also called Trichies or Tritchies, is a type of cheroot associated with the town of Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu, India. The Trichinopoly cigar was actually manufactured from tobacco grown near the town of Dindigul near the present-day Tiruchirappalli and formed one of India's main items of export during the Victorian period. The cigars were cheap and of crude manufacture.

Use of Trichinopoly cigar in Literature and Cinema

In Chapter 3 of A Study In Scarlet, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes provides Scotland Yard officials with a description of a man: "He was more than six feet high, was in the prime of life, had small feet for his height, wore coarse, square-toed boots and smoked a Trichinopoly cigar."

In Chapter 20 of "The Cat's Eye: A Dr. John Thorndyke Story", by R. Austin Freeman, Dr. Thorndyke remarks that at the end of a case, he will "usually smoke a Trichinopoly Cigar."

In Chapter III of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers, Lord Peter Wimsey has been drinking an expensive old port and comments disparagingly on "a fellow who polluted it with a Trichinopoly."

In the Father Brown story "The Salad of Colonel Cray" by G. K. Chesterton, Colonel Cray recounts a story about their service in India and "asked Putnam if he could get some Trichinopoli cigars".

In Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 film The Lady Vanishes, Gilbert, role-playing Sherlock Holmes, offers Iris Henderson a trichinopoly cigar: "For that, my dear Watson, you too have a Trichinopoly cigar."

References

• Parliamentary debates: Senate and House of Representatives, Volume 39. Parliament of Australia. 1908. p. 4224.
• "Trichies, Tritchies". Hobson-Jobson.