Ever since Margaret Keenan became the first person in the UK to receive a Covid-19 jab in December 2020, there has been much debate about vaccination, writes Neil Crossfield…
‘Anti-vaxxers’ have held marches in Central London and social media is full of conspiracy theories about the supposedly ill effects of vaccines. But opposition to national vaccination programmes is nothing new.
In Victorian Southwark, there were many diseases which could kill; typhoid, cholera and scarlet fever to name but a few, but perhaps the most feared was smallpox, an ancient disease spread by the variola virus.
After experiencing fatigue and high temperature, patients would often develop a terrible rash, with pus-filled spots erupting over their entire body. Death occurred in up to 30 per cent of cases and even if they survived, patients were often left with terrible scarring. While Edward Jenner had invented vaccination in the 1790s, it did not become mandatory until the Compulsory Vaccination Act of 1853. All newborn babies had to be vaccinated before they were three months old.
Opposition to this measure led to the formation of anti-vaccination movements all over the country. In 1866 the Anti Compulsory Vaccination League (ACVL) was set up in Finsbury and branches soon spread throughout London.
By November 1877 the South London ACVL was formed. Meeting at 333 Albany Road, Camberwell, they stated their objectives as “the total, immediate and unconditional repeal of the Compulsory Vaccination Acts, support for wives and families of those who may go to prison for their principles and the payment of fines from a central fund.”
A later Vaccination Act in 1867 meant that parents who failed to get their children vaccinated within three months of birth were liable to a fine of up to twenty shillings. Previous legislation had meant that parents could only be fined once but the new act meant repeated prosecutions could be made up to the age of 14.
In 1878 the South London ACVL circulated a petition to get this clause removed, advertising that it could be signed in various locations such as the Southwark Radicals club, Bermondsey, the Freethought Institute, Walworth and the ‘Ark Mission’, Rotherhithe.
On 7 June 1879, the Southwark Mercury reported that Benjamin Reeves, a Bermondsey leather dresser, had been summoned to attend the Southwark Police Court by Alfred Hudson, the Vaccination Officer of St. Olaves Union, for neglecting and refusing to have two of his children vaccinated. At the hearing he had argued that he had a conscientious objection to the laws and that he could have documents in his possession that showed the ‘wicked and pernicious’ Act was spreading the disease rather than benefiting the population.
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The magistrate, Mr Partridge, would have none of this and told Reeves that he had to obey the law, that his argument was ‘all nonsense’ and that the vaccination had been proved to be effective in combating smallpox.
He finished by telling Partridge that he was a “stubborn, foolish man” and fined him three shillings with a further two shillings costs.
One particularly sad incident in Southwark demonstrates that the debate was more than just an intellectual argument.
William Escott was a member of the South London ACVL. He was a master boot maker, originally from Devon, who is shown in trade directories as running a shop at 278 Southwark Park Road. In September 1881 local papers reported that he had consistently refused to have his children vaccinated and that he had been fined on several occasions.
One of his children had contracted smallpox but after being nursed by his mother had survived. Unfortunately, his wife had caught the disease and died. Two more of his children then died, with three more contracting smallpox and being removed to hospital.
The grieving husband had borrowed a suit from his neighbour, Mr John Angus, to wear at his wife’s funeral, after which the suit was kept in his house for a couple of days before returning it to his friend.
The suggestion is that the suit had been infected with smallpox and subsequently Angus himself contracted it and died. Up to sixteen further people in houses next to Escott’s also developed the disease and were admitted to hospital.
If the loss of his wife, children and neighbours were not punishment enough, there were efforts made to prosecute Escott under the 1866 Sanitary Act for a failure to properly fumigate his premises. The magistrate at Greenwich Police Court dismissed this case, recognising that it had been brought partly out of vindictiveness.
While supporters in the anti-vaccination camp would have some sympathy for him, wider public opinion was largely hostile. When the Rotherhithe Vestry met to discuss the matter in early September 1881, the Chairman, Rev. E.J. Beck (who was also the Rector of St Mary’s church Rotherhithe) showed little Christian compassion. He is recorded as saying: “If ever a man was a murderer, I think that this man is”.
A poignant footnote to this story is that in September 1883 it was reported that Escott had committed suicide in the washhouse of his shop. The inquest held at the Raymouth Tavern found that he had hung himself in a state of temporary insanity.
A Mr. B. Reeve from the Southwark ACVL wrote to the South London Chronicle suggesting that his suicide was caused by failing health and financial worries and not due to any remorse he may have felt. Reeve also went on to argue that two of four people who died in the outbreak had been vaccinated and that Escott himself had not contracted smallpox.
We cannot know if Escott’s views on vaccination changed after the death of his wife and two children, but it is likely that he would have been ostracized in his local area, being blamed for the outbreak and this may have played some part in his decision to end his own life. The censure Escott received at the inquest and in the press may seem harsh by today’s standards, but then, like now, passions ran strong on both sides of the argument.
Members of the medical profession tried to dispel the more spurious claims made by their adversaries. Dr William Tiffin Illiff was the chief medical officer for Newington Vestry and in 1880 he published a report called ‘Small-Pox and Vaccination’. In this, he countered many of the bizarre claims put forward by the other side. He notes that their ‘principal charges against vaccination are that it poisons the blood, sets up disease not hitherto existing, conveys scrofula, consumption, skin disease, syphilis and typhoid fever, shortens life and causes an increased death rate’.
Isolating smallpox patients came into favour in the 1880s but capacity in hospitals was limited. In order to address this, the Metropolitan Asylum Board, who had responsibility for providing hospitals to which patients with smallpox and other communicable diseases could be taken, eventually leased three former Royal Navy warships, HMS Atlas, HMS Endymion and HMS Castalia for use as overflow facilities.
These were first moored on the Thames at Deptford but later moved further down river to Dartford. Patients could find themselves transported to South Wharf, in Rotherhithe, where they would be taken by boat to the hospital ships. This was located on the land where the Surrey Docks Farm now stands.
As well as a jetty, South Wharf also had several shelters which could be used to isolate patients before they moved on. A major outbreak of smallpox in London during 1901-1902 meant that South Wharf was extremely busy during these years. On December 28, 1901, it held some 41 smallpox patients at this site.
The introduction of the conscientious objection clause meant that generally the anti-vaccination movement declined in popularity. However, the successor of the ACVL, the National Anti-Vaccination League which had been formed in 1898, continued to campaign against other immunisations for polio, diphtheria and influenza for many years. Perhaps surprisingly, newspaper articles show that the organisation was still holding meetings in 1971 and that its successor, the Howey Foundation, was not dissolved until 1982.
Many of the arguments put forward by Victorian anti vaccination campaigners are still being trotted out by modern day anti-vaxxers – and medical scientists still struggle to counter this propaganda and misinformation.
