‘Medical Popes’ and ‘Vaccination Protestants’: Anti-Catholicism and the Campaign against Compulsory Vaccination in Victorian England

Abstract

The anti-vaccination campaign of the late nineteenth century has attracted the attention of historians in recent decades. The campaign against compulsory vaccination for smallpox gained the support of hundreds of thousands of people in Victorian Britain. Many objected to vaccination on scriptural grounds. Many others claimed that it was contradictory to their belief in mesmerism, Swedenborgianism or hydropathy. Still others argued that the Vaccination Acts of 1867 and 1871 represented a violation of individual liberties. One overlooked aspect of this movement relates to the use of anti-Catholic rhetoric in the speeches and literature which its leaders produced. A significant proportion of these leaders were drawn from the community of medical dissent. These individuals lived through a period when anti-Catholicism began to wane as a political force in England. Confronted with the new phenomenon of medical professionalization, they sought to style themselves as the inheritors of a Protestant tradition. In doing so, this article suggests that they attempted to repurpose the frailties of their movement – its reputation as crankish, plebeian or marginal – as strengths, and the avowed expertise of medical professionals as a weakness.