Tag: vaccination

‘I would rather send her to Australia than have it done’. A misguided father refuses to vaccinate his daughter

Mary_Jane_Vacc

In 1867 parliament passed one of its more sensible pieces of legislation, the Vaccination Act (30 & 31 Vict. c.84). This built upon several previous smaller acts to insist that all newborn children were vaccinated (at the parish’s expense) within three months of birth. If they did not, or if they failed to bring in their children to be examined, they faced summary conviction and a fine of up to 20s (or prison if they could not pay).

It was this act that James Bovingdon fell foul of in late August 1868. The Merton based poulterer was summoned before the magistrate at Wandsworth Police court by Edwin Bailey, the registrar of births and deaths for Mitcham. He explained that Bovingdon was yet to vaccinate his daughter Emily, who had been born on 3 December 1867.

James Bovingdon told Mr Dayman that he had not vaccinated his child ‘on principle’. When issued with a  notice to vaccinate on 8 January he had declared that he ‘would rather send it [Emily] to Australia than have it done’.

The magistrate asked him why he took this view. Bovingdon replied that he’d heard several opinions on the merits of vaccination and was under the impression that it was optional. UnknownThere was misread mistrust of vaccination and immunisation in the 1800s, born in part of a more general mistrust of the medical profession by the working classes. Powerful anti-vaccination images (like the one of the right) were produced with dark warnings that doctors were more liable to kill your child with the vaccine than save it from smallpox (the killer disease of the nineteenth century).

Bovingdon said also that he’d no idea that a new law compelled him to vaccinate his child. He had, he added, taken the child to be vaccinated after he was summoned to court. That was good but he was still in breach of the law and Mr Dayman fined him 10s  with a further 10s  costs (20s in all, as the law prescribed). He added that if he didn’t pay the fine he would go to prison for 14 days.

In 1898 a new act was appeased that recognized that some magistrates were not applying the law (which had been tightened further in 1873 to make vaccination compulsory). The 1898 act allowed parents to avoid conviction and a penalty if they ‘made a statutory declaration that [they] confidently believed that vaccination would be prejudicial to the health of the child, and within seven days thereafter delivered, or sent by post, the declaration to the Vaccination Officer of the district’.

Today we have reached a situation where vaccination (for diseases such as measles) has become a serious issue once again. As a result of misinformation being circulated on the Internet some parents fear vaccination even when it is both safe and essential. This risks the return of killer diseases (like smallpox and TB) that were thought to have been eradicated by modern medicine.  It is hard not to see the parents that risk their children’s lives (and the lives of many others) as ignorant at best and willfully stupid at worst.  Surely it is time to take that decision away from them and reintroduce compulsory vaccination for all children, with appropriate punishment for parents that do not comply.

[from The Morning Post, Monday, August 31, 1868]

An insurance man ignores the risks to his child and earns the condemnation of the Hampstead bench

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an anti-vaccination pamphlet from the USA (c.1894)

Thomas Williamson was clearly frustrated at finding himself before the magistrate at the Hampstead Police Court. As a member of London’s growing middle-class the insurance agent (who must have known a thing or to about risk) was summoned by the local vaccination officer for not allowing his daughter to be inoculated against small pox.

The officer, Charles Weekley, stated that Louise Elizabeth Williamson, who had be born a year earlier in October 1882, had still not be vaccinated as the law required. The family had been sent several notices but all of them had been ignored, moreover Weekley had himself visited the Williamsons only to be told that they refused to vaccinate Louise because they ‘did not approve of it’.

Weekley had informed the local Board of Guardians and they applied for the summons; Williamson had then been given a further six weeks grace to comply with the injunction to have his child vaccinated but had still steadfastly refused. The result was this very public appearance before Major-General Agnew and Mr Gotto, the presiding magistrates at Hampstead.

In his defence Mr Williamson said that it was not him who objected but his wife. He argued that until the child reached the age of seven she was Mrs Williamson’s responsibility and he was unable to persuade his spouse to agree to something she so was  set against.

It should not come as a surprise that parents were occasionally (or even frequently) reluctant to have their children vaccinated in the late 1800s. There had been widespread resistance earlier in the century when Edward Jenner had first proposed infecting people with ‘cowpox’ to prevent smallpox. The treatment itself may have deterred some while others thought it ‘unchristian’ and abhorrent to introduce animal germs into a human child. We should remember that many Victorians distrusted doctors and had much less faith in science than we do today.

But it was also a question of personal liberty and many people felt it was simply not the business of the state to interfere in family life. Today we are well-used to politicians bemoaning the so-called ‘nanny state’ and for calls for greater freedom from regulations  even if this is not now generally applied to healthcare.

That said there has been a long running campaign against the MMR vaccination which was based on false rumours that the injection was linked to colitis and autism. The campaign was founded on a fraudulent science paper (published in the Lancet in 1998) which was later retracted. It has been described as “perhaps, the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years” and since the retraction the government have been trying to reboot the vaccination programme.  Sadly, it appears not everyone has got the message: Donald Trump (that well-known authority on all things medical) has linked back to the the now discredited research to make links between vaccination and autism.

Back at Hampstead Police Court poor Mr Williamson was rebuked by one of the magistrates for his inability to rule his own roost. ‘You are the father of the child, and master in your own house’, Major-General Agnew told him.

‘I can’t take the child out of her arms, or use force. No act of parliament will allow me to do that.’ protested the insurance man.

‘That argument, I’m afraid will not hold water’ replied the Major-General.

Mr Gotto was a little more conciliatory: ‘Surely your wife would prefer it [the vaccination] being done to you being fined, or sent to prison?’ he asked.

Mr Williamson agreed that he had already had his elder children vaccinated in compliance with the law but both ‘had suffered from it’. The bench ignored this last plea and fined him 10s including costs, warning him that he must comply or be summoned again. The man left court to bring the unhappy news back to his wife, I wonder how that conversation went.

[from The Morning Post (London, England), Thursday, October 25, 1883]

for other blogs on this subject see:

A parent is unconvinced by the theory of vaccination

Smallpox brings death and difficult decisions to the Westminster Police Court

A parent is unconvinced by the theory of vaccination

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The Cow Pock by James Gillray (1802) satirizes the campaign against vaccination

Many of the cases that came before the Police Courts actually had little resemblance to anything we might today call ‘crime’ but there was plenty that might come under the general banner of regulation.

In recent years there has been something of a campaign against vaccination – specifically the MMR jab which was rumored (incorrectly) to cause autism. Vaccination was pioneered in the early 19th century by Edward Jenner and people were quick to ridicule his efforts. Jenner successfully found a vaccination for small pox, a disease that had killed thousands in Britain and Europe.

Even by the later 1800s not everyone was convinced that vaccination worked or was desirable. The government was convinced and acted to make vaccination compulsory by a series of statutes from 1867 to 1873. However there was considerable disquiet about this and many people simply refused to present their children to the parish officers for their injections. As a result plenty of parents found themselves in court facing a magistrate.

John Forster Howe was one such father. Howe appeared at Greenwich Police Court in September 1881 charged with ‘disobeying an order of the court to have his child vaccinated’. The Vaccination Officer confirmed the facst before Mr. Howe offered a spirited defense of why he felt the prosecution was unjustified and vaccination inappropriate.

He gave no less than eight reasons:

“Because we believe the theory of vaccination to be unsupported by sufficient evidence”; statistics could be shown to have ‘intensified the evil’ not lessened, it, and there was no proof it had stopped small pox. He rejected the idea that the best way to prevent a disease was to infect a child with that very same disease. The dangers involved here far outweighed the limited risk of catching small pox itself.

He also (and this echoes modern complaints) felt it undermined his ‘liberty of conscience’ (his freedom to choose in other words). So for him a refusal to obey a bad law was the best way to bring about much ‘needed reforms’.

It was a sterling defense and the newspaperman reported it verbatim. It did him no good, the justice fined him 20s plus 2s costs. Howe said he was happy to pay but would never comply with the law.

[from Daily News , Monday, September 19, 1881]