[This article first appeared in Discover Your Ancestors online periodical June 2022].
VACCINATING VICTORIA
by Ruth A Symes
Queen Victoria at the height of her reign in
1882. Photograph by Bassano Details: Wikimedia Commons.
With all the uproar
about jabs and boosters right now, we could be forgiven for thinking that debates
about the pros and cons of being vaccinated are very much a twenty-first
century preoccupation. In fact, vaccination in history has always had its
supporters and its detractors, and our very own Queen Victoria had some
forthright opinions on the matter.
Until the twentieth
century, ‘vaccination’ really meant ‘vaccination against smallpox’, a terrible
disease for which there was no cure. Killing a third of those it infected and
leaving many others with awful disfiguration and even blindness, smallpox was
top of the public health agenda for decades. After Dr Edward Jenner’s discovery
of the smallpox vaccine in 1796, the question of whether our ancestors
were vaccinated largely came down to the affordability and availability of the
vaccine in the area in which they lived. But, as the disease claimed more and
more victims, particularly in the new industrial cities there were growing
calls for vaccination to be made both free and compulsory.
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Dr Jenner and the Potato: A potato shaking hands with Edward Jenner, claiming him as a fellow vaccinator. Watercolour by John Leech (1817-1864) Details: Wellcome Collection www.wellcomecollection.org
By the time, Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, the debate had reached a high pitch. Whether or not the young Queen would decide to set an example to the country and update the smallpox vaccination she had had as a baby was a matter of concern to some of her advisors. Six European monarchs in the not- too-distant past were known to have died of smallpox, nobody wanted Victoria to be the seventh.
On Sunday 20th January 1839, the young Queen recorded in her journal that Lord Melbourne, her Prime Minister, had reminded her between more light-hearted conversations about horses and Shakespeare, that her people were getting smallpox ‘like wildfire.’ He had gently but persistently asked her to get vaccinated. At this point in her life, headstrong Victoria was set against having the jab it on the grounds that she ‘thought it quite useless.’ But Melbourne persisted, “You think it's childish,” he continued; “now that's nonsense; I shall see Halford [Sir Henry Halford – her doctor] tomorrow morning; shall I ask him?” I said he might &c. He was very kind and earnest about it; and I, very obstinate.” Melbourne emphasised ‘what a scrape [Victoria] would get us all into’ if she actually contracted smallpox and potentially could not communicate with her Ministers. It would appear that Victoria did at this point succumb to Melbourne’s advice.
William Lamb, Lord Melbourne, British Prime Minister, 1835-1841, painted by John Partridge, 1844. Melbourne urged the young Queen to get vaccinated in January 1839, ‘“You'll have it done,” he said; “If it doesn't take, why then you're safe; and if it does, it can do no harm”. Queen Victoria’s Journal, January 1939. Details: Courtesy of Wikimedia.
Soon after this, in
1840, Parliament passed the first Vaccination Act, offering free inoculation
to all. It also banned the dangerous practice of ‘variolation’ whereby patients
had sometimes been inoculated with material from smallpox pustules on another
patient (rather than with material derived from the less nasty cowpox). Take up
of the vaccine was encouraging and reduction of infection noticeable, but
because the Act had stopped short of making vaccination mandatory, there were
still many concerning outbreaks of the disease across the country. Stricter
measures were deemed necessary and in 1853, another Act of Parliament made
vaccination compulsory (on penalty of a fine) for infants under three years
old. Vaccination certificates were given out by local registrars when a baby’s
birth was registered. These had to be returned to the registrar having been
signed by a doctor. Further legislation in the late 1860s and early 1870s
created new administrative roles specifically to oversee vaccinations, and
penalties for non-compliance were raised.
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These new, more stringent, rules about vaccination
caused a backlash. To start with, the chief reasons that ordinary people
objected to vaccination were cosmetic and medical. It was popularly believed
that the vaccine itself could cause disfiguration, blindness and even death. A further
key concern was that the human lymph (which was used as a diluent in the
vaccine) could, in itself, transmit diseases - including hepatitis, syphilis
and even the smallpox it was trying to eradicate – from one person to another.
An outbreak of smallpox in Scotland in 1871 prompted a
more vigorous vaccination programme and this time Queen Victoria readily obliged
by having her vaccination updated. Unfortunately, she took ill soon after
receiving the dose in the spring of 1871. As might have been predicted, there
was an outcry of sympathy from the growing anti-vaccination movement. A letter
from one ‘Looker on,’ published in Cosmopolitan on 21st
September 1871, referred to the Queen having submitted to the ‘filthy operation,’
and having been ‘dreadfully punished for her presumption.’ The enraged writer
even went so far as to say the Queen had been ‘poisoned by vaccination.’
In her middle years, Victoria maintained an interest
in the problem of smallpox and was particularly concerned about how the public
were to be convinced that vaccination was a good thing. On Sunday 5th
March 1871, she spoke to William Forster (the Whig statesman who had recently
campaigned so successfully for universal elementary education) and described how
he had spoken ‘of the smallpox being so fearful and the people in many cases so
unreasonable about vaccination.’ To Victoria’s consternation, Forster also advised
that it was difficult ‘to find Hospitals for [all the smallpox] cases.’
Now, Victoria began to take her responsibilities as
role model more seriously; the Royal Family continued to be regularly jabbed and
allowed that fact to be reported in the press. On 10th January 1877, for
instance, the Birmingham Mail reported that, ‘Yesterday afternoon, at
the Request of her Majesty, a number of members of the Royal Household were
vaccinated at Windsor Castle by Doctor Fairbank, the Queen’s surgeon.’ These
vaccinations went ahead despite the fact that the Queen was aware that they
could have unpleasant side effects. In her journal for Tuesday 1st
May 1883, she wrote that, ‘the little wee Baby (probably her granddaughter Princess Alice,
daughter of her son Prince Leopold, born February 25th 1883) is
always brought in at breakfast & luncheon time. Poor little thing, it has a
most terrible leg from vaccination.’
Vaccination Points: Packets of Vaccination Points supplied by the Government Lymph Establishment for use at various vaccination stations around London, 1873. Details: Wellcome Collection www.wellcomecollection.org.
But, the example of the Royal Family did not quell public fears about vaccination. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, the numbers of people suffering from smallpox actually fell; the result of a combination of public health initiatives of which vaccination was only one. Perversely, protests against being inoculated grew. Now the arguments against were less to do with the perceived medical dangers of vaccination and more to do with social liberty. Many people simply did not want to be told by government what to put into the bodies of their children. On 23rd March 1885, there was a large and unruly anti-vaccination demonstration in Leicester in which between 40,000-200,000 (estimates varied) people marched, including many who had either been imprisoned or fined for failing to pay fines for having refused to be vaccinated.
As a result of such vociferous protests in the
press and in the streets, the government were eventually forced to relax the
laws governing vaccination. In 1889 a Royal Commission into Vaccination made several
recommendations including the abolition of cumulative penalties for refusal to
vaccinate and the use of safer vaccines. In 1896, the Anti-Vaccination League (founded
by William Tebb) set out further to persuade the government to reduce penalties
for refusal to vaccinate.
The last years of Victoria’s life were coloured by
the ups and downs of this nationwide debate on vaccination. Thankfully,
however, she lived to witness a legislative turning point which pacified some
of the critics. The Vaccination Act of 1898 removed cumulative
penalties for refusal to vaccinate. And, crucially, members of the public were
now granted the right to refuse vaccination by applying for a ‘Certificate of Conscientious
Objection’. The new rules allowed a loophole for - and for a time satisfied - those people who
absolutely objected to the idea of vaccination and paved the way for even laxer
laws in the decades after Victoria’s death.
Though by the end of the nineteenth century elderly
and infirm, Victoria’s interest in the subject of vaccination had not waned. On
Sunday 7th August 1898, she wrote in her journal that the previous
day, she had talked to the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury ‘over the vexed & difficulty question of vaccination.’ She did not agree
with the so-called "Conscience Clause," - believing that vaccination should remain
compulsory. But, she did conclude that the ‘new bill’ was ‘in many ways good.’ On vaccination, as on so many other matters during
her long and scientifically challenging reign, Victoria had proved herself
openminded, wise and sensitive to the needs and concerns of her subjects.
Henry H. Balfour: Victoria recalled a conversation with Henry H. Balfour (then First Lord of the Treasury), who commented after the Vaccination Act of 1898 that ‘the question of vaccination [] had been very badly managed but [] thought it would have the effect of rather increasing vaccination than the reverse, as the declaration [of Conscientious Objection] would be so troublesome & expensive.’ (Queen Victoria’s Journal, Sunday 21st August 1898), date unknown, published in Popular Science Monthly Volume 65, 1904. Details: Wikimedia Commons.
Further Reading
- Brunton, Deborah. The
Politics of Vaccination: Practice and Policy in England, Wales, Ireland,
and Scotland, 1800–1874: Rochester Studies in Medical History, 2008
- Gibson, Jeremy & Rogers,
Colin. Poor Law Union Records [England & Wales]: Federation of
Family History Societies, 1997/2000 (Contains lists of surviving
vaccination records and their whereabouts)
- Williamson, Stanley. The
Vaccination Controversy: The Rise, Reign and Fall of Compulsory
Vaccination for Smallpox: Liverpool University Press, 2007
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