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The self-explanatory phrase to smoke like a chimney, and its variants, mean: to smoke tobacco very heavily.
This phrase occurs, for example, in the following paragraph from Why more of us are dying for a fag, by “ardent cigarette lover” Darragh McManus, published in the Irish Independent (Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland) of Friday 9th May 2008 [page 20, column 7]:
Many of us cast envious eyes to those ineffably glamorous heroes and heroines of film noir, all of whom smoked like proverbial chimneys. Can you imagine Bogart chewing gum instead of drawing on a Lucky Strike?
—Cf. also the following words and phrases:
– ashtray breath;
– chain-smoker;
– you’ll be smoking next;
– a fool at one end and a fire at the other;
– bogart (to monopolise);
– as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike;
– back of a cigarette packet.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the phrase to smoke like a chimney and variants that I have found:
1-: From an account of a case heard at Bow Street Police Court, London, published in The English Chronicle, and Whitehall Evening Post (London, England) of Saturday 1st May 1824 [page 3, column 4]:
John Griffiths, Matthew Nicholson, and Robert Welldone, were brought before Mr. Minshull, late on Wednesday night, charged with an assault and battery on the person of Mr. Thomas Penman. […] Tobacco—sublime tobacco! as my Lord Byron calls it, was the cause of all this combustion […].
The complainant, Mr. Thomas Penman—a large portly man, of full blown physiognomy, is the proprietor of a brewery at Kingston-upon-Thames; the defendants are operative coppersmiths, and the scene of action was the tap-room and bar of the Queen’s Head, in Long Acre […]. Mr. John Griffiths placed himself before the bar with a pipe of tobacco sticking out of his face, and smoking away like the chimney of the King of the Netherlands. “Come, I say,” said mine host—“you know I don’t allow this sort of thing before my bar, so either put out your pipe or be off to the tap-room.”
2-: From the Hereford Journal (Hereford, Herefordshire, England) of Wednesday 25th May 1831 [page 4, column 3]:
Conversation between a French veteran who had served in Spain, and one who had survived the Russian campaign:—“What sort of a creature is a Spaniard?”—“An animal dry as tinder, black as a mole, and smoking like a chimney.”
3-: From The Compromise. A Tale for “True Lovyers.” [sic], by ‘T. H. S.’, published in the Southern Telegraph (Rodney, Mississippi, USA) of Friday 11th March 1836 [page 1, column 3]—reprinted from the Cincinnati Mirror:
She would have died, rather than have dwelt under the same roof where a kitten inhaled the breath of life. Next to her hatred of kittens, was her hatred of tobacco—particularly of segars. She protested it would kill her to look upon the mouth of her husband smoking like a foul chimney of * a damp day.
[* Other reprints of this tale have: “smoking like a foul chimney on a damp day”.]
4-: From “Liberal” Theory of Marriage, published in The Northern Liberator and Champion (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland, England) of Saturday 11th July 1840 [page 5, column 1]:
She will be a prim old maid and pious prude in appearance, but a very termagant in reality, who will smoke like a chimney, and once or twice set the curtains on fire by getting a cup too much, and taking a pipe in bed in the afternoon!
5-: From Bizarre Fables. Fable V. The Fool Who Proved His folly, by William Arthur B. Lunn, published in The Era (London, England) of Sunday 27th June 1841 [page 7, column 1]:
Mudgkins bent his steps towards the rooms of Mr. Richard Dawson, a great crony of his, and a capital fellow. Dick Dawson could sing a good song, drink to any extent, and smoke like a factory-chimney.
6-: From a letter to the Editor, by ‘Cool as a Cucumber’, published in The New York Herald (New York City, New York, USA) of Monday 1st August 1842 [page 2, column 5]:
Here I am, happy as a king, with a friend at my elbow, pursuing the three great requisites of a good fellow—sits like a hen, drinks like a fish, and smokes like a chimney—and I may add, by way of parenthesis, as the devil said to his horns, “there’s a pair of us”!
7-: From Stella; Or, The Omen of the Grave. A Romance. Chapter II., by the British author James Malcolm Rymer (1814-1884), published in Lloyd’s Companion to the Penny Sunday Times and Peoples’ Police Gazette (London, England) of Sunday 12th November 1843 [page 4, column 3]:
There were assembled by eight o’clock no less a number than nine persons, eight of whom were provided with pipes, while the unit sat gazing on the ceiling in mute wonder, as well at the attempted murder of Martin Ratcliffe, as at the pipe-smoking, the latter being a feat which acted always as an ungentle emetic upon him, although he would have given anything to have done as they did, and smoked away like a foul chimney.
8-: From The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit: His Relatives, Friends, and Enemies. [&c.] (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1844), by the English novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) [volume 2, chapter 8, page 116]:
“Europian!” remarked Chollop, with sardonic pity. “Quite Europian!”
And there he sat. Silent and cool, as if the house were his; smoking away like a factory chimney.
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