The Particulate Breathing Apparatus, circa. 1852

Flannigan demonstrates his "party brat".
Most popular among the privileged classes of counties Clare and Limerick in Ireland, the "party brat" (by which the device became affectionately known) became so ubiquitous that it was considered one of the primary factors responsible for a dramatic increase in cannabis use witnessed throughout Ireland during the late 1850s and early 1860s.

(This little known fact is well-documented by the world's first known demographer, Charles "Chuckles" Pratt, in his commentary on the social evils of 19th century Irish society, Cannabis Shenanigans.)

Flannigan created the device during an 1852 trip to Hong Kong, while he scoured the town's opium dens, looking for the dissolute Tyrolean mountaineer, Gunter Gruntz. Flannigan became fascinated with the hookah, an oriental water-cooled pipe. He made his first sketches of the "party brat" during his search for Gruntz. (This episode is outlined in the excellent monograph, Feng Brat.)

Flannigan's niece, Emily Chesley, was exposed to the particulate breathing apparatus (or "pba" as she called it) most of her life. It is a delicious irony that Chesley turned the unsavory reputation of one of her uncle's most infamous devices to her own narrative ends in the 1905 novel, The Party Brat.

--"Scholarship" by The Squire and Foothills