6 - Challenges to Vaccination Policy

Summary

By the late 1860s, the overt opposition to John Simon's efforts to establish systematic supervision of all aspects of public vaccination had died away. The Poor Law Board was, albeit reluctantly, passing on regulations to local authorities. Adverse comments from practitioners had died away, although few were willing to express their support for expert inspection, and advice from the Medical Office inspectors was often quietly ignored by vaccinators and boards of guardians. The early 1870s saw a new wave of attacks on Simon's vaccination policy. An increasingly vocal antivaccination movement objected to laws that allowed parents to be repeatedly prosecuted for failing to have their children vaccinated. Under the pressure of a severe smallpox epidemic, medical practitioners began to criticize the Medical Office's policy of restricting the availability of public vaccination and demanded new guidelines on technique to prevent the transmission of syphilis and to restore public confidence in vaccination. None of this pressure, however, was sufficient to shake Simon's faith in his vaccination policy. In reports, he repeated his belief that high standards of vaccination practice were the best means of controlling smallpox. Consequently, he refused to make more than minor revisions to instructions on vaccination practice or to regulations on provision. He made no concessions to the antivaccination lobby, rejecting moves to limit penalties for failure to vaccinate. Even the major administrative shake-up that followed the formation of the LGB in 1871 did not materially alter public vaccination policy.