137 years ago in Leicester, England, there was a mass demonstration against compulsory vaccination. According to Dale L. Ross, the Times reported the next day:
The widespread opposition to the enforcement of the compulsory clauses of the Vaccination Acts which exists in Leicester culminated yesterday in a great demonstration, which was carried out very successfully. The position which the inhabitants of the town have assumed with regard to this question is due to a variety of causes. At the present moment there are over 5,000 persons being summoned for refusing to comply with the law. The total number of summonses issued in the year 1884 only reached seven, or a little over one summons in every two months, while at the present moment forty-five summonses are being heard and disposed of every week… The last decade has witnessed an extraordinary decrease in vaccination, but nevertheless, the town has enjoyed an almost entire immunity from smallpox, there never having been more than two or three cases in the town at one time. Under such a system the Corporation have expressed their opinion that vaccination is unnecessary, as they claim to deal with the disease in a more direct and much more efficacious manner. This, and a widespread belief that death and disease have resulted from the operation of vaccination, may be said to be the foundation upon which the existing opposition to the Act rests
According to Alexander Kotok, the people of Leicester considered hygiene and sanitation to be a more effective way of opposing the disease:
Leicester residents raised hygiene and sanitation to their shield instead of vaccinations – and they were not wrong. Leicester also made history with the largest demonstration against compulsory vaccinations, held on March 23, 1885, which was attended by 80,000 to 100,000 people from across England. The demonstration was organized by the Anti-Vaccination League in response to continued harassment of parents who refused to vaccinate their children (in 1885 3,000 people were facing punishment in Leicester). It ended with the burning of Jenner’s portrait and a copy of the Mandatory Vaccination Ordinance. Totally in Britain the demonstrations against compulsory vaccination took place in 135 cities and towns, while in 1876 they were held in 58 cities.
The BBC confirms this information, specifying that after the mass compulsory vaccination, 8 years later, smallpox returned with renewed vigor, while in Leicester, a city of active anti-vaccinationists, the death rate from the disease was one of the lowest in all of England:
In October 1884 the Leicester Board of Guardians asked the London authorities for an easing of prosecutions, in the light of the Leicester method. The request was rejected, setting the stage for the city’s mass protest of 1885.
Although peaceful, the scale of the demonstration shook the establishment. Medical professionals feared for the unvaccinated city, predicting "a terrible nemesis would overtake it in the shape of a disastrous epidemic".
Smallpox duly returned between 1892 and 1894. And the result shocked many.
Leicester actually escaped relatively lightly, with 370 cases – a rate of 20.5 cases per 10,000 of the population – resulting in 21 deaths. This was a far lower figure of cases than in some well-vaccinated towns like Warrington (125) and Sheffield (144).
Anti-vaccinationists were triumphant, claiming the Leicester method had been proven.
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