1. That every child, whose health permits, shall be vaccinated within three, or in case of orphanage within four months of birth, by the public vaccinator of the district, or by some other medical practitioner.
2. That notice of this requirement, and information as to the local arrangements for public vaccination, shall, whenever a birth is registered, be given by the registrar of births to the parents or guardians of the child.
3. That every medical practitioner who, whether in public or private practice, successfully vaccinates a child shall send to the local registrar of births a certificate that he has done so; and the registrar shall keep a minute of all the notices given, and an account of all the certificates thus received.
4. That parents or guardians who, without sufficient reason, after having duly received the registrar’s notice of the requirement of Vaccination, either omit to have a child duly vaccinated, or, this being done, omit to have it inspected as to the results of Vaccination, shall be liable to a penalty of £1; and all penalties shall be recoverable under Jervis’s Act, and shall be paid toward the local poor-rate.
Thus from 1853 every English parent became liable to a fine of twenty shillings and costs who refused or neglected to have his child vaccinated within three months of birth. It may seem surprising that an Act so arbitrary, enforcing an indefinite medical prescription (for Vaccination was not defined, and Vaccination is a rite of several varieties) should have been passed so lightly; but we have to recollect the circumstances. The House of Commons in those days was the house of the upper and middle classes, and was as little affected as the House of Lords itself by the proposed legislation. It was an Act for application to the vulgar—to the prejudiced, whose prejudices were to be encountered, not with arguments, but with fines; an illustration of the levity with which the unconcerned can dispose of the opinions and feelings of those to whom they owe no allegiance. Since that time the working-classes have plainly discovered that they only obtain consideration in Parliament in so far as they can make their power felt in the constitution of Parliament. No rights are secure that cannot be enforced, nor any justice certain that cannot be vindicated. Those who hold their ground by any other tenure than their own intelligence and vigour are liable to continual imposition and depredation.
The good old rule, the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can—