Some leading arguments against compulsory vaccination / Issued by The London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination.

  • London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination.
Date:
1887
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some leading arguments against compulsory vaccination / Issued by The London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination. 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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    be inflicted, before it is three months old, an acute specific disease known as Vaccinia. The wishes and desires of the parents are to bo in no way consulted. The acute specific disease may have had effects fatal to one of their children, such effects involving a death of unspeakable and prolonged agony ; but of this the law takes no cognisance, and insists that other children of such parents shall be submitted to the same operation. Thus, in October, 1882, a Report was presented to Parliament of the Government Inquiry into the deaths of four children in Norwich, who had died from the effects of vaccination performed in the preceding June by Dr. Guy, the Public Vaccinator. The Report was embodied in a Blue Book, No. 385, 395, of 1882 ; and shortly after its presentation, Mr. Dodson, then President of the Local Government Board, was asked whether the deaths of these children would constitute a reasonable excuse under the Act for the non-vaccination of any subsequent children of the same parents; and Mr. Dodson was compelled to reply from his place in Parliament, that it would not. It is only neces- sary to realize for a moment the amount of mental suffering inflicted by an attempt to carry out the law within a home so situated, to reflect what kind and what intenshVy of feeling the law would thus claim to override, in order to have to confess that in the amount of its departure from the principle of laisser-faire, in the extent of its interference with personal liberty and the boasted sanctity of each man's home, the vaccination law stands alone. And, as it is exceptional in its own nature, so it has been exceptional in the amount of the suffering it has inflicted upon many whom it has vainly tried to subdue. Let us take a few cases of this kind of persecution, that we may see what have really been the RESULTS OP THE LAW. In a Return to the House of Commons, No. 289, 1881, was embodied such information as could be procured respecting the infliction of repeated penalties under the Vaccination Acts. Only the initials were given of the persons concerned ; but in the return from Kent, p. 5, we find that a certain C. W. N. suffered no less than nine periods of imprisonment, one being of seven days, one of fourteen, and seven periods of one month each. This C. W. N. is Charles Washington Nye, a watchmaker of Chatham, who suffered these imprisonments in Canterbury and Maidstone gaols between 1869 and 1877, and who, though not sentenced to hard labour (the law