The removal of Mr. Gibbs was a severe discouragement; but a good cause may always be trusted to evolve its own prophets. Mrs. Gibbs, as became a wise woman, felt that she could not better honour her husband than by consecrating herself to his work. She formed the Mother’s Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League; and until her own death, 10th November, 1878, devoted her training, experience and intelligence to awakening an interest in those divine laws of life of which a practice like vaccination is a deliberate negation.

In 1872 Mr. John Pickering, of Leeds, in conjunction with Mr. Henry Pitman, started the The Anti-Vaccinator fortnightly, and continued it for a year. To maintain such a journal is far from easy. As Napoleon III. observed to Cobden, “There are a good many free-traders in France, but you must remember that the people are not organised, whilst the trades which prey upon the people are organised and are always alert.” To overthrow the trade in vaccination, established, endowed and enforced, is to encounter the enmity and opposition of the organised profession at whose instigation and for whose advantage vaccination was established, endowed and enforced; and to effect the overthrow, it is necessary to raise up a countervailing force among a public apathetic, ignorant, and credulous as to medical mysteries. The overthrow might be thought hopeless were it not for the leverage afforded by the compulsory law. Every parent who has wisdom and love enough to refuse to have his child vaccinated, is enabled to bear his testimony in court, to have it certified by fine or imprisonment, and to have his triumph published for encouragement and repetition. There is no preaching like such practice, for which the evil law itself provides opportunity.

Mr. Pickering was fined over and over again, and in his Anti-Vaccinator he proved abundantly that he had reason and science without end for his steadfast resistance to the legalised superstition. In 1876 he was enabled to strike a blow for the truth not likely to be forgotten, especially in Yorkshire. The statistics of the Leeds Smallpox Hospital had been published after the fashion of similar concoctions—an insignificant mortality among the vaccinated being set against a prodigious mortality among the unvaccinated. The statistics were denounced as fictitious, and proof of the accusation being demanded, Mr. Pickering produced the proof.[293] The requisite inquiry was tedious and difficult; and because tedious and difficult it was presumed it would never be attempted, and that impunity was assured. The exposure demonstrated afresh how little dependence is to be placed on the collocation of figures by those whose pride and interest are committed to a foregone conclusion.

The severity of the compulsory law is subject to frequent abatement in its administration by poor law guardians. They appoint and pay vaccination officers, and it is for them to consider and, to sanction repeated prosecutions. Hence a majority, or an energetic minority of guardians adverse to vaccination may do much to frustrate its public administration. What is practicable in this way was shown by the Keighley guardians in 1876. They declined to prosecute; they disregarded the admonitions of the Local Government Board; and they refused to obey a mandamus issued from the Queen’s Bench. They were thereon arrested for contempt of court, and committed to York Castle, from which they were released after nominal submission. They were re-elected by the ratepayers, and did as before, but more discreetly.

There is a proverb about taking a horse to the water and trying to make him drink, which applies to legislation when equally disliked by those expected to enforce it and by those on whom it is to be enforced. Under such conditions the compulsory act is of no effect in Keighley: those who like may be vaccinated, and those who do not, need not. The majority are unvaccinated and nowhere is smallpox less feared. In several towns where public sentiment is similarly enlightened, something of the same freedom is enjoyed. In many parishes it is the rule to disallow repeated prosecutions: the vaccination officer fulfils his commission in prosecuting once, and then his hand is stayed. In some parishes those who are known to be opposed to vaccination are passed over on the tacit understanding that they keep quiet as to their indulgence; a course of procedure extremely injurious to the good cause, damping enthusiasm and suppressing that conflict and agitation by which it prospers. In other parishes no quarter is allowed: the law is worked with rigour. Prosecution follows prosecution until either fury exhausts itself, or the nonconformist is driven elsewhere.

Such persistent prosecution often becomes a public scandal. To a parent with adequate means, the fines and costs are trivial, and are amply repaid by the satisfaction of setting guardians and justices at defiance, and publishing far and wide his contempt for the vaccine superstition. On the other hand, a parent in humble circumstances is often put to cruel straits between his love and duty to his child and the comfort of conformity.

In the difficulty thus created by the law, the Local Government Board is frequently appealed to for advice; and in 1876 the Board, at that time under the presidency of Mr. Sclater-Booth, addressed a letter of counsel to the Evesham guardians, which, translated from official circumlocution, came to this—Prosecute until you are satisfied your antagonist cannot be overcome: then consider whether you had not better desist; for he may obtain sympathy, and the law and the rite alike suffer discredit in public estimation. In Cowper’s words, “Safe policy, but hateful.” This Evesham letter has become a standard document, and is regularly posted by the Board to guardians in perplexity as to the extent of vengeance they should execute. Such is the variety of valour taught from Whitehall—“Fight until you discover you are not likely to prevail; and take care to leave off before you make yourselves hateful or ridiculous.” Law was never, perhaps, reduced to baser terms.

Several attempts have been made to modify the law as recommended by the Vaccination Committee of 1871 and approved by the House of Commons. Mr. Pease (now Sir Joseph) introduced a bill with that purpose in 1872 and 1878, limiting the penalty in any case to 20s., but without success. In 1880 the Gladstone administration, fresh from the country, and flushed with good intentions, brought forward a similar bill, but dropped it in abject fright in consequence of the clamour of the medical trade unions, who fancied their vested interest in vaccination endangered. Nevertheless, those responsible for the law at the Local Government Board avow their disapprobation of repeated prosecutions, and regret that Parliament does not appear to be of a like mind, reckless of the fact that Parliament is rarely unwilling to consent to an administrative change when those in authority state the reasons for it, and insist on the necessity of giving them effect.

Mr. Forster, when moving for the Committee of 1871 in the House of Commons, spoke as if no member was prepared to dispute the efficacy of vaccination against smallpox; and, though the assumption was excessive, it was not far from correct. Even Mr. Candlish only objected to the injustice of compulsion. Since then considerable progress has been made. Mr. P. A. Taylor, who shared the position of Mr. Candlish, subsequently examined the history and evidences of vaccination for himself, with the inevitable result: he discovered that he had been imposed upon, and having made sure, straightway began to make known his discovery to others. Mr. C. H. Hopwood, equally enlightened, moved Parliament for various statistical returns which exhibited the influence of enforced vaccination, in authentic form and on a national scale, as a factor of death and a communicator and aggravator of other maladies. In conjunction, Mr. Taylor and Mr. Hopwood have raised the standard of resistance to vaccination in the House of Commons; and what Mr. Forster in 1871 set forth as indisputable, is now openly and unanswerably disputed; for those who have come to the defence, like Sir Lyon Playfair and Sir Charles Dilke, have been convicted of unquestionable mis-statements which could only pass muster as addressed to uncritical credulity.

Parliament is the creature of public opinion, and to arouse and inform that opinion and to bring it to fruit in legislation, it is necessary to agitate and to organise. Consequent on the death of Mr. R. B. Gibbs in 1871, the League, of which he was leader, underwent a course of vicissitude until, in 1876, it was revived under the presidency of Mr. William Hume-Rothery, with the National Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Reporter for its organ, edited by Mrs. Hume-Rothery. The energy and ability which Mr. and Mrs. Hume-Rothery have brought to their arduous enterprise have been unwearied and conspicuous—their self-consecration has been unreserved. Sometimes they have been charged with vehemence and intolerance, but when we consider the craft with which they are confronted on one side, and the credulity on the other, the misery and mortality resulting from the cruel practice, and the monstrous oppression exercised on those who resist the despicable superstition, it is not easy to be calm, or to adjust invective to a scruple. “Thou shouldst not speak so strongly, John,” said a Friend to her husband, when denouncing some iniquity. “Ah! Jane,” he replied, “thou knowest not what I keep back.”