The politics of prevention: Anti-vaccinationism and public health in nineteenth-century England

Medical History

Volumn 32, Issue 3, 1988, Pages 231-252

  Porter, Dorothy ^a   Porter, Roy ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HEALTH LEGISLATION; HUMAN; LEGAL ASPECT; POLITICS; THEORETICAL STUDY; UNITED KINGDOM; VACCINATION;

ENGLAND; HISTORY OF MEDICINE, 19TH CENT.; HUMAN; PREVENTIVE MEDICINE; VACCINATION;

EID: 0023948766     PISSN: 00257273     EISSN: 20488343     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0025727300048225     Document Type: Article

References (126)

1. W. M. Frazer, History of English public health 1834–1939, London, Baillière, Tindall & Cox, 1950, pp. 70–72, 106–112;
2. P. McHugh, Prostitution and Victorian social reform, London, Croom Helm, 1981
3. and J. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, Cambridge University Press, 1980.
4. See H. W. Rumsey, Essays on state medicine, London, Churchill, 1856, passim.
5. See Donald R. Hopkins, Princes and peasants. Smallpox in history, University of Chicago Press, 1983;
6. Pierre Darmon, La longue traque de la variole. Les pionniers de la médecine preventive, Paris, Librairie Académique Perrin, 1986;
7. R. M. MacLeod, ‘Law, medicine and public opinion: the resistance to compulsory health legislation, 1870–1907’, Public Law, summer 1967, 106–128, 188–211;
8. R. Lambert, ‘A Victorian national health service: state vaccination, 1858–71’, Hist. J., 1962, 5: 1–18;
9. Ann Beck, ‘Issues in the anti-vaccination movement in England’, Med. Hist., 1960, 4: 310–321.
10. For recent discussion on the visual representation of anti-vaccinationism, see G. Prescott Nuding, ‘A Victorian controversy: William Calder Marshall's statue of Edward Jenner’, (unpublished paper).
11. Royston Lambert, Sir John Simon 1816–1904 and English social administration, London, Macgibbon & Kee, 1963, pp. 250–258;
12. B. J. Stern, Should we be vaccinated? A survey of the controversy in its historical and scientific aspects, London, Harper, 1927, pp. 54–57.
13. Lambert, note 4 above, pp. 322–329.
14. John Simon, English sanitary institutions London, Cassell, 1890, p. 262.
15. For discussions of the claims of vaccination in the reduction of smallpox see Charles Creighton, A history of epidemics in Britain, 3rd ed., Cambridge University Press, 1894;
16. Major Greenwood, Epidemics and crowd diseases, London, Williams & Norgate, 1935, pp. 226–244;
17. William H. McNeill, Plagues and peoples, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1977, pp. 249–258;
18. Peter Razzell, The conquest of smallpox, Firle, Sussex, Caliban Books, 1977.
19. and for Sanderson see Lady Burdon Sanderson, Sir John Burdon Sanderson, a memoir, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1911.
20. For discussion of some of their professional lives see D. Watkins, ‘The English revolution in social medicine’, University of London PhD Thesis, 1984.
21. Lambert, note 4 above, pp. 323–328, 391–394.
22. Frazer, note 1 above, pp. 111–112, 170–172;
23. Lambert, note 4 above, pp. 443–447.
24. Simon, note 2 above, pp. 310–312.
25. and White, note 17 above, pp. 542–543.
26. The elder Collins was also an author of books on evolution. See W. F. Bynum, ‘Darwin and the doctors: evolution, diathesis and germs in nineteenth-century Britain’, Gesnerus, 1983, 40: 43–53.
27. For contemporary discussion of the Final Report and the Minority Report and the role of Picton see Public Health, 1895–6, 8: 397–398;
28. and 1897–98, 10: 99–100.
29. A. Wohl, Endangered lives. Public health in Victorian Britain, London, Methuen, 1984, pp. 134–135;
30. For discussions of the experience of the workings of the Act in practice see Alfred Ashby, ‘The duties of Medical Officers of Health in relation to smallpox in view of the altered law of vaccination’, Public Health, 1898–99, 11: 460–469;
31. J. Wright Mason, ‘Smallpox in Hull and the experiences of the working of the Vaccination Act, 1898’, 1899–1900, 12: 265–272.
32. White, note 17 above, pp. 501–509;
33. Lambert, note 4 above, pp. 392–393, 445;
34. See Stuart M. F. Fraser, ‘Leicester and smallpox: the Leicester method’, Med. Hist., 1980, 24: 315–332.
35. See, for example, the discussions of vaccination in ‘Council Minutes’, Society of Medical Officers of Health 1889–1907, and discussions of compulsory vaccination in Public Health throughout the 1890s and beyond the 1907 amendment to the Vaccination Acts.
36. C. Creighton, Natural history of cowpox and vaccinal syphilis, London, Cassell, 1887.
37. C. Creighton, Jenner and vaccination, London, Swan Sonnenschein, 1889.
38. See H. W. Lyle, King's and King's men, London, Oxford University Press, 1935, pp. 179–181.
39. and for its importance to the development of biochemistry see N. Morgan, ‘The development of biochemistry in England through botany and the brewing industry’, University of London PhD thesis, 1982.
40. Edgar M. Crookshank, The history and pathology of vaccination, 2 vols, London, H. K. Lewis, 1889.
41. Genevieve Miller, The adoption of inoculation for smallpox in England and France, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957, pp. 101–133;
42. For general discussion of inoculation in the eighteenth century see History of inoculation and vaccination (XVII International Congress of Medicine, London, 1913), London, Burroughs Wellcome, 1913, pp. 39–50;
43. and for some specific issues see Derrick Baxby, ‘A death from inoculated smallpox in the English royal family’, Med. Hist., 1984, 28:303–307;
44. David Van Zwanenberg, ‘The Suttons and the business of inoculation’, 1978, 22:71–82.
45. For discussion of the philosophy of Priessnitz and the reception of hydropathy in England see R. Price, ‘Hydropathy in England 1840–70’, Med. Hist., 1981, 25:269–280;
46. P. S. Brown, ‘Social context and medical theory in the demarcation of nineteenth-century boundaries’, in W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter (editors), Medical fringe and medical orthodoxy, London, Croom Helm, 1986, pp. 216–233.
47. For the life of Vincent Priessnitz see Richard Metcalfe, Life of Priessnitz founder of hydropathy, London, Metcalfe's London Hydro, 1898.
48. Robert Watt, Treatise on chincough, with inquiry into the relative mortality of the diseases of children in Glasgow, Glasgow, 1913.
49. Watt is also discussed by Creighton, note 7 above, pp. 583, 597–600, 629.
50. See Alfred Russel Wallace, Vaccination a delusion, its enforcement a crime, London, Swan Sonnenschein, 1898;
51. See the ‘Preface’ to G. B. Shaw, The doctor's dilemma, London, Constable, 1913; 1st ed., 1906.
52. See Vaccination Inquirer, 1896–7, 18: 183–184.
53. See Creighton's contributions to the Manchester Conference of the National Anti-Vaccination League in 1897, in Vaccination Inquirer, 1897–8, 19: 111–112.
54. For discussion and extensive quotation from Newman on his beliefs in anti-vaccinationism see White, note 17 above, pp. 544–550.
55. See, for example, April–June editions of the Vaccination Inquirer, 1894–5, 16. It was used especially for important editions such as 1 June 1896, when the Inquirer announced “Our new position” within the movement after the National Anti-Vaccination League superseded the London Society and took over the journal.
56. White, note 17 above, p. 580.
57. MacLeod claims that White himself had been publishing it privately in 1879, and Tebb, together with W. J. Collins and Garth Wilkinson, arranged to subsidize the journal in October 1880 (note 3 above, p. 190).
58. For a selection of texts see: P. A. Taylor, Speeches of Mr P. A. Taylor and Mr C. H. Hopwood on vaccination …from 1883, London, E. W. Allen, 1883;
59. Alexander Wheeler, Vaccination opposed to science and a disgrace to English law, London, E. W. Allen, 1879;
60. John Pickering, Which? Sanitation and sanitary remedies or vaccination and drug treatment, London, E. W. Allen, 1892;
61. William Young, The Vaccination Acts. Powers and duties of magistrates and guardians, London, E. W. Allen, 1889;
62. Ursula Mellor Bright, An evil law unfairly enforced, London, Allen & Young, 1886;
63. C. T. Pearce, Vital statistics showing the increase of smallpox, erysipelas … in connection with the extension of vaccination, London, [the author], 1877;
64. idem, Vaccination its source and effects, London, Baillière, 1869;
65. W. J. Collins, Ought vaccination to be enforced?, London, reprinted from the Students' Journal of St Bartholomew's Hospital, 1882;
66. William Tebb, Brief story of fourteen years’ struggle for parental emancipation from vaccination tyranny, London, E. W. Allen, 1894;
67. A. Milnes, The theory and practice of vaccino-syphilis, London, E. W. Allen, 1891.
68. Published in a single volume with a preface and supplement, Vaccination tracts, London, William Young, 1879.
69. For the most recent and detailed discussion of Garth Wilkinson see Logie Barrow, ‘An imponderable liberator: J. J. Garth Wilkinson’, in Roger Cooter (editor), Alternatives: essays in the social history of irregular medicine, London, Macmillan, 1988.
70. For Pearce see C. T. Pearce, Diarrhoea and cholera: their homeopathic treatment and prevention, Northampton, Clifton, 1853.
71. See Francis W. Newman, A lecture on women's suffrage, Bristol, the Athenaeum, 1869;
72. Jacob Bright, The speeches of Mr. Jacob Bright M.P., Robert Lowe M.P., Mr J. S. Mill M.P., and Mr G. Shaw Lefevre M.P., in the debate on the second reading of the Bill to Amend the Law with Respect to the Property of Married Women, Manchester, A. Ireland, 1868.
73. Francis W. Newman, The theory and results of the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866, 1869, Bristol, 1870;
74. Jacob Bright, The Contagious Diseases Acts. Speech delivered in the House of Commons, July 20, 1870, Manchester, Ireland, 1870.
75. For listing of the Committee and Officers of the Mothers’ Anti-Vaccination League see An Anti-Vaccinator (pseud.), A New Year's gift to the Lord Provost, Magistrates and Town Council of the City of Glasgow 1st January 1874, Glasgow, Thompson, 1874, pp. 50–51.
76. William Tebb and E. Perry Vollum, Premature burial and how it may be prevented, 2nd ed., edited by W. R. Hadwen, London, Swan Sonnenschein, 1905.
77. See Beatrice E. Kidd and M. Edith Richards, Hadwen of Gloucester. Man, medico, martyr, London, Murray, 1933, pp. 146–147.
78. See John Pickering, The smallpox epidemic in Gloucester from April 20th-June 5th 1896 and the water cure, London, E. W. Allen, 1896.
79. See W. J. Collins, Armaments and policy (Presidential address read 29 June 1909 at the National Peace Congress held at Cardiff), Westminster, National Council of Peace Societies, 1909;
80. J. R. Sanitary Inst. 1906, 10.
81. Francis W. Newman, The coming revolution, Nottingham, Bailey & Smith, 1882, p. 3.
82. Rev. William Hume-Rothery, Vaccination and the vaccination laws: a physical curse and a class-tyranny, Manchester, Tulley, 1872, p. 15.
83. William White was a bookseller from Glasgow who became a prominent Swedenborgian, as was his fellow anti-vaccinator J. J. Garth Wilkinson. White was appointed as the Swedenborg Society's manager in 1854, and its official publisher after some degree of controversy during 1863. He wrote a biography of Swedenborg, which went into numerous editions and was also published in America. Apart from other spiritualist tracts, he also wrote about the need for phonetic spelling and supported the case for the invention of a universal language. Besides the Great delusion he wrote a number of separate volumes on anti-vaccinationism. See William White, Swedenborg: his life and writings, London, [the author], 1856
84. reprinted from the Phonetic Journal, Bath, Isaac Pitman, 1856;
85. idem, The universal language. An argument for a reformed orthography as a means of aiding the universal diffusion of the English language, London, Frederick Pitman, 1854, Bath, Isaac Pitman, 1854, Glasgow, [the author], 1854;
86. idem, Reasons for the phonetic representation of the English language, reprinted from the Phonetic Journal, Bath, Isaac Pitman, 1870;
87. idem, Sir Lyon Playfair taken to pieces and disposed of: likewise Sir Charles Dilke, London, E. W. Allen, 1884.
88. For current discussion of the Jenner vaccine, see Derrick Baxby, Jenner's smallpox vaccine. The riddle of vaccinia virus and its origin, London, Heinemann, 1981.
89. For a case history concerning cowpox derived from horsegrease, see John M. T. Ford, A medical student at St Thomas's Hospital, 1801–1802.
90. The Weekes family letters, (Medical History, Supplement 7), London, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1987, pp. 112–113.
91. Vaccination tracts, note 55 above, Tract 3, p. 6.
92. White, note 17 above, pp. 306–307.
93. Vaccination Inquirer, 1879–80, 1: 1.
94. For discussion of the overlap between the membership of radical and fringe societies see Mary Ann Elston, ‘Women and anti-vivisection in Victorian England’, in N. Rupke (editor), Vivisection in historical perspective, London, Croom Helm, 1987, pp. 259–294.
95. Vaccination Inquirer, 1897–8, 19: 46–47.
96. See Alfred Milnes, Theory and practice of vaccino-syphilis, London, Allen, 1891, which reprints the editorial discussion of Hutchinson's work published in the Inquirer during 1891.
97. See the Anti-Vaccinator and Public Health Journal, 1872, 1: 65–66.
98. Vaccination Inquirer, 1880–81, 2: 5–6; 1882–3, 4: 46–47.
99. ‘Vaccination versus sanitation’, pp. 108–109;
100. see also William Tebb, Sanitation not vaccination the true protection against smallpox, Westminster, London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination, 1882.
101. J. C. McVail, ‘Cowpox and smallpox: Jenner, Woodville and Pearson’, Br. med. J., 1896, 1: 1271–1276;
102. idem, ‘Vaccination or sanitation?’, Public Health, 1895–6, 8: 266–270.
103. See ‘McVail unveiled’, Vaccination Inquirer, 1893–4, 15: 170–172; 1894–5, 16: 20–22, 38–40.
104. See the reports of the ‘Controversy in The Times’ between Bond, Hadwen, and Tebb in the Vaccination Inquirer, 1898–99, 20: 91–96, 105–107.
105. For further discussion of Leicester, see Dale-L. Ross, ‘Leicester and the anti-vaccination movement, 1853–1889’, Leicester Archaeological and Historical Soc., Trans., 1967–8, 43: 35–45.
106. Vaccination Inquirer, 1879–80, 1: 56.
107. Margaret Pelling, Cholera, fever and English medicine 1825–65, Oxford University Press, 1978, pp. 26–30, 74–75.
108. Celia Miller (editor), Rain and ruin. The diary of an Oxfordshire farmer, John Simpson Calvertt, 1875–1900, London, Alan Sutton, 1983, p. 227.
109. Vaccination Inquirer, 1894–5, 16: 17.
110. Public Health, 1896–7, 9: 214.
111. Vaccination Inquirer, 1896–97, 18: 151.
112. Kidd and Richards, note 59 above, pp. 82–85.
113. Vaccination Inquirer, 1895–6, 17: 150–153.
114. Kidd and Richards, note 59 above, pp. 98–118.
115. Vaccination Inquirer, 1895–6, 17: 139–43, 153.
116. Hadwen himself was accused of having his children vaccinated at Cheltenham. His biographers attempt 163–176, to demonstrate this as a false slander, and mention that a certain “notable anti-vaccinationist of Gloucester, a newspaper proprietor” was indeed vaccinated. General Phelps owned the Citizen, but they do not refer to him specifically. John Campbell, M.O.H. for Gloucester, also implicates Phelps as the newspaper proprietor and chairman of the local branch of the League who was vaccinated during the epidemic. See Public Health, 1896–7,9:214.
117. Hadwen was beset by ethical controversies. He was accused of unprofessional advertising by the British Medical Association and debarred from membership. He also initiated and won a case for libel, in which he claimed that it had been falsely alleged that he had wrongly certified a child who died of smallpox as dying of a disease of the brain. See Kidd and Richards, note 59 above, 180–183. pp.
118. Vaccination Inquirer, 1896–7, 18: 19.
119. Public Health, 1896–7, 9: 216.
120. Vaccination Inquirer, 1896–7, 18: 78.
121. Public Health, 1896–7, 19: 210–218.
122. Public Health reprinted extracts from a broad statistical analysis of the relation of vaccination to smallpox deaths up to 1887 which Milnes had also presented before the Royal Statistical Society during 1896, together with extensive criticism of his methods and extrapolations. See Public Health, 1896–7, 9: 319–326.
123. D. Porter and R. Porter, ‘What was social medicine? A historiographical essay’, Historical Sociology, 1987, 1: 90–106
124. D. Porter, ‘Public health and the town planning movement: preventive medicine and corporate politics’ (unpublished paper delivered at the ‘History of Medical Geography’ conference, Wellcome Institute, London, 25 September 1987).
125. A. Newsholme, ‘Some conditions of social efficiency in relation to local administration’, J. r. Inst. publ. Health, 1910, 18: 529–50.
126. Parallel developments occurred also in Essex. See J. R. Smith, The speckled monster, Chelmsford, Essex Record Office, 1987.