J. T. Biggs
J. T. Biggs | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1847 |
| Died | 1929 |
| Occupation | Sanitary engineer |
John Thomas Biggs (1847–1929), best known as J. T. Biggs was a British sanitary engineer and anti-vaccinationist.
Biggs worked as a sanitary and waterworks engineer.[1] Biggs was a member of the Leicester Board of Guardians.[1] During the smallpox epidemic of 1871–1873 he studied the outbreak and came to the conclusion that vaccination was inefficient to prevent disease. He was a notable figure in the anti-vaccination movement in Leicester. He opposed compulsory vaccination and became the Secretary of the Leicester Anti-Vaccination League in 1870.[1] He was the main organizer of a popular anti-vaccination demonstration that took place on 23 March 1885 outside Leicester Temperance Hall in which the whole practice of vaccination was condemned.[1][2] It became known as the "Great Leicester Demonstration" with an estimated 80,000 protestors that gathered in the marketplace with anti-vaccination banners.[2]
Biggs gave evidence against vaccination to the Royal Commission which was set up to investigate the efficacy of vaccination against smallpox.[2][3] Biggs testified to the Royal Commission that an anti-vaccination prisoner had been thrown into a "black hole" and made to suffer "every possible degradation". He also stated that a child had caught "a sort of foot-and-mouth disease" from calf-lymph vaccination.[4] Biggs answered 3000 questions and produced 51 statistical tables and 15 diagrams. An error in the official figures during his cross-examination caused a recalculation of his data which took a further two years.[2] To the disappointment of Biggs the 1896 Report of the Commission supported the continuation of compulsory vaccination as protective against smallpox.[2]
Biggs was a member of the National Anti-Vaccination League.[5] His anti-vaccination arguments were criticized in The Lancet journal over two decades.[2] John Douglas Swales has described Biggs' book Sanitation Versus Vaccination as an "exhaustive 785 page volume of misplaced evangelical zeal".[2]
Selected publications
[edit]- Sanitation Versus Vaccination (London: National Anti-Vaccination League, 1912)
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d Ross, D. L. (1967). "Leicester and the anti-vaccination movement, 1853-1889" (PDF). The Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society. 43: 35–44. PMID 11636858.
- ^ a b c d e f g Swales, J. D. (1992). "The Leicester Anti-Vaccination Movement". The Lancet. 340 (8826): 1019–1021. doi:10.1016/0140-6736(92)93021-E. PMID 1357411. S2CID 9563184.
- ^ Porter, Dorothy; Porter, Roy (1988). "The Politics of Prevention: Anti-Vaccinationism and Public Health in Nineteenth-Century England". Medical History. 32 (3): 231–252. doi:10.1017/s0025727300048225. PMC 1139881. PMID 3063903.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Durbach, Nadja. (2005). Bodily Matters: The Anti-Vaccination Movement in England, 1853–1907. Duke University Press. p. 108, p. 125. ISBN 978-0-8223-3423-1
- ^ Fitchett, Joseph R; Heymann, David L. (2011). "Smallpox Vaccination and Opposition by Anti-Vaccination Societies in 19th Century Britain". Historia Medicinae. 2 (1): E17.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)