Apprenticed at the age of fourteen to an uncle's tobacco factory near Kyiv in Ukraine, Louis Rothman emigrated to the United Kingdom with very little money in 1887.
[1] In 1893, he married Jane Weiner and at about the same time opened a small kiosk at 55a Fleet Street (reputed to have been the smallest shop in the City of London) from where he sold the cigarettes he had rolled the previous night.
After the First World War had ended, he had to use the name Rothmans of Pall Mall to distinguish his business from a shop in Regent Street that had been started by his brother, Marx, and subsequently sold to someone else.
[1] In 1912 or 1913, Louis merged his business with that of Markus Weinberg to form the Yenidje Tobacco Company Limited.
In 1922, they started to sell cigarettes by mail order through the Rothman's Direct-to-Smoker service.