Chess history trivia

[IM Jack Rudd]

Andersson, surely? Anderssen was long dead by then.

[MJMcCready]

Yep, typo on my part.

Here's where the info comes from.

http://www.olimpbase.org/1976/1976in.html#trivia

[John Townsend]

Which top French player was tried for owning snuff and cigars of foreign manufacture?

[Geoff Chandler]

Snuff!

Must be one of the older generation, La Bourdonnais, Philidor, Saint-Amant, Legall...(I've run our of 17th and 18th century French players....Napoleon!)

[John Townsend]

Each forumite is allowed one guess.

[Geoff Chandler]

One Guess. So it must be one of them. I'll work it out logically.

Not Legall, to much of a coincidence, Legall being illegal.
Not Phildor, too busy composing music, playing blindfold chess and worrying about pawn formations.
Not La Bourdonnais cannot remember any reports of him pipe smoking or snuffing.
So it must be Saint-Amant - and he was grassed up to the authorities by Staunton.

[John Townsend]

You shouldn't assume it is one of those five. I was merely establishing the (desirable) principle of one guess per person.

Anyway, it wasn't Saint-Amant.

[Colin Patterson]

I'm thinking a fair bit of obscure trivia would be known about Duchamp, so he would be my guess.

[John Townsend]

Sorry, Colin, but it wasn't Duchamp. Incidentally, while we are on the subject, there is a good article by Edward Winter, Marcel Duchamp and Chess:

https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/duchamp.html

[Kevin Thurlow]

I think Louis XV banned import of snuff, but I have no idea if the ban were ever repealed. Anyway, having decided not to say Alireza, how about Alekhine as a wild guess.

[Gerard Killoran]

From The London Magazine - Volume 2 - Page 97 (1825)

...I retain a more vivid recollection than M. de Legalle; he was a thin, pale old gentleman, who had sat in the same seat at the Café, and worn the same green coat for a great number of years when I first visited Paris. While he played at chess, he took snuff in such profusion that his chitterling frill was literally saturated with stray particles of the powder...

[John Townsend]

Sorry, Kevin, but not Alekhine.

I see from Gerard's quote that Legalle was a snuff-taker, but he is not the one who was put on trial.

To give a clue, the trial was not long after the Staunton v. Saint-Amant match in Paris.

[John Clarke]

Well I'll try Deschapelles. He was still alive at the time of the 1843 match, and just the sort of contrarian character who'd have decided the rules didn't (or shouldn't) apply to him.

[John Townsend]

Deschapelles is correct. Well done, John. It was reported in the British press at the time, e.g. Morning Post, 20 January 1844, page 6. He was acquitted.

[Geoff Chandler]

Who was the husband and wife who both played Morphy. (the women also played Capablanca making that a fairly unique double.)