View report page

173
[1899
VACCINATION.
Since 1897 I have not presented a report to the Vestry on the
state of Vaccination in Islington. At that time I had to animadvert
on the faulty manner in which the Acts dealing with it
had been enforced, and I pointed out that the number of children
where vaccination was not finally accounted for had risen to 24.0
per cent, of the births. This was up to then the highest per centage
known. It is said that in every deep there is a deeper still, and if
so this was reached in 1898, when the altogether unprecedented
record of 32.3 per cent, of the births was finally unvaccinated.
No doubt in 1895, '96, '97 and '98 people who objected to
vaccination refused to have the operation performed on their children
in the hope that the legislation then expected, now accomplished,
would provide them with a loophole by which they might evade their
obligation. The new Act, known as "The Vaccination Act, 1898,"
did provide such a loophole in its second section, which enacts
" that no parent or other person shall be liable to any penalty under
section twenty-nine or section thirty-one of the Vaccination Act of
1867, if within four months from the birth of the child he satisfies two
justices or a stipendiary or metropolitan police magistrate, in petty
sessions, that he conscientiously believes that vaccination would be
prejudicial to the health of the child, and within seven days thereafter
delivers to the Vaccination Officer for the district a certificate by
such justices or magistrate of such conscientious objection."
This section came into force on the passing of the Act, but in
its application to a child born prior to that date it says " there shall
be substituted for the period of four months from the birth of the
child the period of four months from the passing of this Act."
It appears that the parents or guardians of 14 children born in
1897, and of 108 born in 1898, were granted exemption under these
provisions, before the other clauses of the Act came into force.
These numbers are not very large, and indeed only represent 0.14
per cent, of the births in 1897, and ro8 per cent, of those in 1898.