This League has been established with the following Objects:—
1.—To obtain the Repeal of the COMPULSORY Clause of the VACCINATION ACTS.
2.—To assist in defending Members, who may be prosecuted under that Act.
Tickets of Membership may be obtained for One Shilling of any Member of the Committee, by whom Donations and Subscriptions will be thankfully received.
Or of the Hon. Secretary,
Mr. G. MARGERISON,
5, BLANDFORD STREET, PORTMAN SQUARE, W.
REPORT.
On Wednesday Evening, October 19th, 1870, a Public Meeting, convened at the requisition, numerously signed, of the ratepayers of Marylebone, was held in the Vestry Hall of that large Metropolitan Parish. The object of the Meeting, as announced by advertisement, was “to take into consideration the Acts of Parliament which render Vaccination Compulsory.”
The chair was occupied by R. Hallam, Esq. a Vestryman, who said, it was twelve months that day, since a meeting was held in that hall, for the purpose of inaugurating a Marylebone Branch of the Anti-Vaccination League. Some gentlemen of the medical profession, subsequently said that if they had been present, they could have upset all the arguments on the other side. The executive of the Marylebone Branch had very straightforwardly said, they would be happy to meet those professional gentlemen, and the public notice which the secretary would read, invited their presence. The notice having been read, the Chairman proceeded to say it must be apparent to all that they were not assembled there to make pecuniary profit. They did not come to receive vaccination fees, but to enter their protest against such an iniquity. The subject they were to discuss was one of the most important that could engage their attention. A great outcry had been raised about the unfortunate position they stood in with respect to infanticide and baby-farming; and Dr. Lankester, one of the coroners for Middlesex, had made himself very busy to have a check put upon those practices, but why did not the coroner reflect upon the enormous amount of infanticide caused by the point of the lancet? Could he be a conscientious man, when he carried his prejudice for vaccination into the coroner’s court? He very much regretted that they had a medical coroner, and although he had voted for him at first, he would promise never to vote for another gentleman of the same profession. He then referred to the recent inquiry in St. Pancras, on the body of a child which died the day after it was vaccinated. The death was attributed to congestion of the lungs, but the iniquitous part of the proceedings was that the doctor who vaccinated performed the post-mortem examination. Referring to the general question, he said that under the vaccination system, even when small-pox was absent there was an equivalent disease present. Dr. Lankester himself, in a return he had furnished to the parish of St. James’s, said that although they had no small-pox, they had its equivalent—scarlet fever—very bad. Dr. Lankester had also said that there were three small-pox cases in the hospital; one patient was unvaccinated, and two had been vaccinated. That order of things was not according to the promise of the vaccinators, who told them that vaccination was a preventative. Before calling on the speakers he would just say to the medical profession, that they desired a fair and impartial investigation. As an individual he was open to conviction, if any gentleman present could prove he was in the wrong, but as far as he at present saw, he should as much expect to see the sun shining in the middle of the night, as to be convinced of the utility of vaccination. If any medical gentlemen wished to speak and would hand up their names they should be heard.
Dr. Routh and Dr. Thompson (of the Brompton Hospital) sent up then cards.