Vaccination prosecutions, and the Royal Vaccination Commission : the duty of Guardians.

Date:
[1891?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vaccination prosecutions, and the Royal Vaccination Commission : the duty of Guardians. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    9d. per hundred. Reprinted from The Birmingham Daily Gazette, July 2nd, 1891. Vaccination Prosecutions, and the Royal Vaccination Commission. THE DUTY OF GUARDIANS. WE are profoundly sorry that the Guardians of the King's Norton Union have decided to prosecute seven parents for non-compliance with the Compulsory Vaccination Act. The rigour being displayed here and elsewhere in the enforcement of this Act is exceedingly ill-timed. A Royal Commission has been appointed to inquire into and report upon the whole question of Vaccination. A vast amount of evidence has been taken, and no really inpartial person can say that it conclusively proves the efficacy of Jenner's great theory. The very fact that a Commission has been granted is an admission that there is prima facie a doubt as to whether the interests of the public are being served by the compulsory enforcement of a rite which is admitted, even by those who advocate it with the greatest energy, to be capable of causing fearful injury to health, and death in not a few cases. It is the law of this country that the man who commits murder shall die by the hand of the public executioner. But who would consign a man to the gallows while a prima facie doubt was acknowledged as to whether any murder had been committed ? Recently the Birmingham Board of Guardians decided to enter upon a vigorous crusade against those who look upon Vaccination with horror, and now the King's Norton Board have followed suit. But why this activity at such a time ? We are not suffering from an epidemic of small-pox—we are not seriously threatened with one ; there is no special display of parental obduracy calling for stern repression. The Vaccination officers have pressed the subject upon the attention of the Guardians, and we are not quite certain that their motives in doing so are wholly disinterested and pro bono publico. They are wroth at the very thought of a Royal Commission having been granted. They are burning with anxiety to convince the public that they have no doubts. Parents with ghastly instances of foul diseases communicated to pure infants by inoculation hold back with horror, but the public vaccinators think only of putting poison into every baby's arm. We have nothing whatever to do with the Anti-Vaccination League, but we have seen with our own eyes a poor little infant, the offspring of healthy parents, bright and pure until it was vaccinated, dying by inches—a mass of horrible sores—after the operation. We have seen the mother of that child weeping over another while the father intimated his sullen and reluctant submission to the coercion of the law. In the Coroner's Court of Birmingham more than one case of that character has been disclosed. Only yesterday we published a cold record of the facts in what is known as the Leeds case. The day before a correspondent summarised in our columns the case of fiendish cruelty of which Lydia Cook, of Southend, was the victim. Such revelations and experiences must give pause to all thoughtful men. The Chairman of the King's Norton Board of Guardians is quite sure that he could convince any reasonable man who needed convincing that Vaccination is supported by facts and common sense. We know most of the available facts, and are not so convinced as to approve the decision arrived at by the majority of the King's Norton Board yesterday. The theory of Vaccination is that by communicating a mild type of a certain disease the human system is protected against a virulent form of the same disease. Now, even admitting that this theory is sound in itself, it is material to bear in mind that the risk of contracting the disease is com- paratively remote, and that it may be made infinitesimal by thorough sanitary precautions. It is still more material to bear in mind that vaccine matter, taken from a human subject which has contracted or inherited