WCP3055

[1]¹

15 Gray's Inn Square Field Court

Gray's Inn

Saturday Feb. 26. 1898

"Vaccination or Delusion"

Dear Sir,

Allow me to thank you most heartily for your pamphlet bearing the above title, which I think is very telling and which I will do my best to circulate. You will perhaps have seen Mr William Lewis'[?] letter on it in today's Echo.

I have some very small criticisms [2] which I have mentioned to Mrs Young, and she, after communication with Mr LH[?] Eastwood[?], thought that I might mention in writing to yourself.

On page 12 you mention that the House of Commons was the operation (of vaccination) compulsory in 1855, and enforced it by penalties in 1867. The first ^compulsory vaccination act was passed in 1853, and inflicted a single penalty for the non-vaccination of a child. The Act of 1867 was construed by the judges as having, 4 to[?] 31, provided for indefinitely repeated penalties. If you read the Echo, perhaps you will have observed that I addressed several [3] letters to that journal in last November and December for the purpose of showing that the system of indefinitely repeated penalties was introduced not by the [1 word illeg.] word of the act of 1867 but by a judicial construction based thereon: and that it was never intended by the House of Commons. The fact was that in 1871 a small [1 word illeg.] condemned by 55 votes to 12 the system of indefinitely repeated penalties.

There is another point on a very different question that I should like to mention, and that is about the small pox [1 word illeg.] in the 18^th century. I see that you refer ^{(in p 141)} to the figures [4] addressed by the late Mr William White. Mr White assumes, and you assume, that there are clear statistics of small pox in the bills of mortality; and Mr White on p. 79 of his story of a Great Delusion gives vaccines figures respecting the deaths from small-pox. What I contend for is this: that while these figures contain all the deaths from small pox they include deaths from spotted fever and from purples: consequently the given figure will represent the maximum beyond which the small pox mortality of the year cannot be supposed to have but the actual small-pox mortality may conceivably be much less. The only book of the bills of [5] mortality that I have seen, which is a book published about the year 1760, classes the small-pox with purples and spotted fever, and gives the aggregate figures for the deaths in each year by these diseases. In terms of the columns the aggregate is called "Small pox, &c.". Probably the majority of such cases were small pox deaths: but I am unaware that there is any certain evidence of the exact number of small-pox cases. You

You say (p.32) the bills of Mortality are the only material for the first period, and the bills of mortality at least before 1760 mix up the deaths from small pox with those from [6] purples and spotted fever. No doubt your comments have reference to cases subsequent to 1760. But if the bills of mortality since 1760 give different classifications of disease, then the whole comparison between a great part of the 18^th century becomes utterly untrustworthy.

The volume of the bills of mortality which I have consulted in the Lincoln's Inn Library. I have never been able to find it in the catalogue of the British museum.

Again thanking you for your pamphlet | I am yours very truly | H N Mozley [signature]