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Olson
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/victorian-anti-vaccinators-personal-belief-exemption/398321/
HEALTH
The Victorian Anti-Vaccination Movement
Today's anti-vaccination movement is not the first. Riots, pamphlets, and an outcry in 19th-century England set the stage for contemporary misinformation campaigns.
By Elizabeth Earl
After germ theory was expanded upon and researchers developed vaccines, the British government outlawed variolation, which still carried some risk of killing the person it was meant to protect, in the Vaccination Act of 1840.
Safer vaccines, which contain a weakened form of a particular disease, replaced variolation, which was a controlled exposure to a disease by injecting a healthy person with some of the infected pus or fluid of an ill person.
To encourage widespread vaccination, the law made it compulsory for infants during their first three months of life and then extended the age to children up to 14 years old in 1867, imposing fines on those who did not comply.
At first, many local authorities did not enforce the fines, but by 1871, the law was changed to punish officials if they did not enforce the requirement.
The working class was outraged at the imposition of fines.
Activists raised an outcry, claiming the government was infringing on citizens’ private affairs and decisions.