Recent measles outbreaks have reignited the debate about the routine vaccination of children and parents’ fears about possible adverse side-effects, but these issues are far from new. During Victorian times, some parents risked fines or even a prison sentence by refusing to allow their children to be vaccinated against smallpox.

Smallpox was a dreadful disease which killed thousands yearly; at one time around one in four people who caught the disease perished. Children were particularly vulnerable. Survivors were often left horribly disfigured by scars or even blind. In the early 18th century Lady Mary Wortley Montagu popularized the practice of inoculation (variolation) in England. If a person was deliberately infected with smallpox through the skin, they caught a mild form of the disease, after which they were largely immune. However, some people died following inoculation. In 1796 there was a major breakthrough: Dr Edward Jenner (1749–1823) published the results of his experiments on a boy named Phipps. Jenner showed that people inoculated with cow-pox (variolae vaccine) were mostly immune to smallpox. Cowpox was a milder disease than smallpox, so this was a less dangerous procedure.

Vaccination was very successful in combating the disease. As early as 1798, parish vestries such as Bozeat in Northamptonshire paid a physician to inoculate poor people in their parish (see W. E Tate, The Parish Chest (3rd edition), Cambridge University Press, 1979).

Following a horrific smallpox epidemic in 1837, an Act to Extend the Process of Vaccination (later amended) was passed in 1840. In England, Wales, and Ireland, Poor Law Boards of Guardians were given powers to use the poor rates to pay medical officers or other practitioners for the gratuitous vaccination of all persons resident…in their parish or union (Report on Small Pox and Vaccination in England and Wales, [434], 1853).

Vaccination was a public health measure, not relief under the Poor Laws. After 1847 the Acts were administered by the Poor Law Board. However, the Vaccination Acts were permissive: Poor Law officials had no powers to enforce the law, and children were still at risk.

In 1853 an Act of Parliament made vaccination compulsory after Sir John Pakington reported that around 100,000 people caught smallpox annually in Great Britain and Ireland (Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, Vol. CXXIX, London, 1853). The 1853 Act required a parent or guardian to take their child to the local vaccination officer (appointed by the poor law board) before it was four months old. Vaccination was most effective if carried out at that age.

Some parents had fears about the vaccine (and there were cases when children had become ill after the procedure). The Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League was formed c.1867. Even some medical men who had personally vaccinated thousands of children, and were well aware of the vaccine’s effectiveness, were against compulsory vaccination because they felt that it infringed civil liberties.

After 1871, vaccination officers worked in tandem with the registrars of births and deaths. Using information supplied by the registrars, officers compiled registers of successful vaccinations. Parents were given certificates of successful vaccination or of postponed vaccinations (if a child was poorly on the date scheduled for the procedure).

Even if vaccination registers have survived for your area of interest, you may not find an ancestor listed. Of the 891,000 children born in England and Wales in 1878, about 88,000 died before they could be vaccinated (roughly 10% of births). At the same date, around 4% of children born were missed because their parents moved and vaccination officers could not trace them.

In Dewsbury Poor Law Union alone, over 28% of children whose births had been registered were unaccounted for (ie, unvaccinated) in the vaccination returns for 1873–1877, although by 1878 the proportion of defaulters had fallen to 13.5%. Other areas where the proportion of unprotected children was 10% or over included some London districts, and unions such as Banbury, Cheltenham and Burton-on-Trent, where the anti-vaccination movement had taken root. (Tenth Annual Report of the Local Government Board 1880-1881, [C.2982], (1881)). Parents faced a 20s (£1) fine if their child was not vaccinated; non-payment could mean a prison sentence. Newspapers reported cases in the magistrates’ courts. Check Quarter Sessions records for instances of parents’ fines or penalties under the vaccination acts. In 1898 a new conscience clause allowed parents to opt out of having their child vaccinated if a magistrate granted permission, and you may discover certificates of conscientious objection against vaccination. The legislation was relaxed further in 1907, and vaccination rates declined.