The Indian or Trichinopoly cigar was a quite popular offering in Victorian England, to the tune of being one of the largest imports from India at that time. In the Holmesian canon, it appears and plays a role in A Study in Scarlet, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, and The Boscombe Valley Mystery just to name a few, or perhaps all occurrences. I'm lazily researching this one in the hopes it helps deliver on an at-times requested light brevity.
We'll stay at the rim of the rabbit hole for this one. Thus here goes my attempt at succinctness. They received their nom de tobacco from their association via manufacture with the city of Tiruchirappalli then known as, you guessed it, Trichinopoly. However, they were not simply rolled in India but also made of leaf grown there, near a town called Dindigul.
Their fermentation process, at least at times, included various distilled fruit juices, the evaporated water from sugar cane juice or palm sap (jaggery), and honey. This puts me in mind of the honeydew tobacco mentioned in The Adventure of the Cardboard Box. At least a well-sized portion of folks then preferred a seemingly cloyingly sweet smoke. I posit that this off-set nicely both the foul odors of air and foul tastes of mouths that I associate with the era. Sanitation and toothbrushes each being in their nascent stages.
[The teeth of Sherlock Holmes will be a future monograph here at Kaplowitz Media.]
That pre-bracketed statement stated, the slightly further along in time GK Chesterton (Trichinopli) in his Father Brown tale The Salad of Colonel Cray also mentions this cheroot-style cigar. As does Alfred Hitchcock in his further-yet down the road 1938 The Lady Vanishes, including a bit of Holmes dress-up. In the very real WWII world, Tri(t)chies found favor in no other than Winston Churchill's oft Cuban smoke-filled eyes. He apparently liked their lighter aroma much more than Helen Stoner and her twin sister did in The Speckled Band.
That's quite a run and the run continues today with the last surviving purveyor, Fenn Thompson & Co. Royal Cigar Works. The company seems to also now offer tobaccos from more familiar regions and I understand they take orders and deliver anywhere (not a sponsor). I also understand that my birthday is all the way from now in February but too, Father's Day is right around the corner.
::: very :::