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The Table that appears above shows how we
in this district are being affected, and how we
are incurring the risk of losing our reputation
of a healthy suburb.
Last year there were 332 births registered;
deduct from these the deaths, removals, and those
not yet legally due, amounting to 75, and there
remain 257 who should have been vaccinated. Of
these, 204 were vaccinated or otherwise
accounted for, and the remaining 53 were those
who had exemptions, so that nearly 26 per cent.
of those who should have been done had escaped,
or, in other words, approximately one out of every
four eligible children are not vaccinated. In
1909 there were 59 objectors, and the year before
that 45, so that in these three years we have 157
unprotected children in our midst utterly defenceless
against smallpox if it appears, and I am
sorry to record that almost without exception
these are children of the working classes.
Now how and why is this? The more
educated and better informed classes are in the
main content to believe in and to be guided by
those who know most about the value of vaccination
and re-vaccination as a preventive of smallpox,
while those on the other hand who from the
very force of circumstances must necessarily know
the least about it, are the most prejudiced
against it.
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