Do you remember how we got out of the mandates for smallpox? What is currently happening with the COVID mandates and protests is nearly identical to what happened 135 years ago with the smallpox vaccine campaigns, where the vaccination made smallpox epidemics worse, the vaccines killed a lot of people, the public refused them, and governments responded by harsher and harsher mandatory vaccination laws.
Eventually, one of the largest protests of the century occurred in 1885 in Leicester (an English city). The manufacturing town of Leicester was subject to England’s 1840 law requiring immunization, and the 1859 law requiring every child to be vaccinated within 3 months of birth. Leicester‘s government was replaced, mandatory vaccination abolished, and public health measures rejected by the medical community were implemented. These measures were highly successful, and once adopted globally ended the smallpox epidemic, something most erroneously believed arose from vaccination.
By the end of 1868, more than 95 percent of the inhabitants of Chicago had been vaccinated. After the Great Fire of 1871 (it leveled the city), strict vaccine laws were passed, and vaccination was made a condition of receiving relief supplies. Chicago was then hit with a devastating smallpox epidemic in 1872 where over 2000 persons contracted smallpox, with over 25% dying, and the fatality rate among children under 5 being the highest ever recorded.
As widespread skepticism of the vaccination increased, enforcement increased, with no legal recourse available to opt out of the immunization regardless of the situation or physician recommendation. Reports are abound across the world of vaccination resistors being fined and jailed or forcefully vaccinated, with parents often opting to receive these punishments in order to spare their children from vaccination.
Tensions reached a boiling point and on March 23, 1885, a large protest estimated at 80,000 to 100,000 people erupted. It was composed of citizens of all professions from across England and received support from citizens across Europe who could not attend it. The procession was two miles long, with displays showing the popular sentiments against vaccination present throughout the crowd. The demonstration was successful, and the local government acceded to and acknowledged their demands for liberty.
Assaults on officers enforcing vaccination occurred, and riots periodically broke out. This 1874 quote from Emeritus Professor F. W. Newman encapsulates the mood of the time: “Decorous and admissible language fails me, in alluding to that which might have seemed incredible thirty years ago—the commanding of vaccination on a second child of a family, when vaccination has killed the first; and then sending the father to prison for refusal.
That year, following the protest, the government was replaced, mandates were terminated, and by 1887 vaccination coverage rates had dropped to 10%. To replace the vaccination model, the Leicester activists proposed a system of immediately quarantining smallpox patients, disinfection of their homes and quarantining of their contacts alongside improving public sanitation.
The medical community vehemently rejected this model, and zealously predicted Leicester’s “gigantic experiment” would soon result in a terrible “massacre,” especially in the unprotected children, who were viewed by government physicians as “bags of gunpowder” that could easily blow-up schools (along with much other hateful and hyperbolic rhetoric directed at them). This smallpox apocalypse would forever serve as a lesson against vaccine refusal the medical profession bet their stake upon.
As the predicted catastrophe failed to emerge, Leicester had dramatically lower rates of smallpox in subsequent epidemics than other fully vaccinated towns (ranging from 1/2 to 1/32). Various rationalizations were put forward to explain this, but as the decades went by, a gradual public acceptance of Leicester’s methods emerged, but even 30 years later, a New York Times article still predicted a disaster was right around the corner and it was imperative Leicester change their methods. Fortunately, the value of Leicester’s novel approach of quarantining and improving public hygiene was recognized and gradually adopted around the world, leading to the eventual eradication of smallpox.
Fact check me, but the lesson was not to rely on the medical experts and lawmakers for solutions; they promoted solutions that exacerbated the problems. The solutions that worked came from the people and they were opposed by the mainstream establishment.
