John Thomas Biggs (1847–1929) was an English sanitary engineer and activist for anti-vaccination and vegetarianism.

Anti-vaccination

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]

In 1901, Biggs was a speaker at an anti-vaccination meeting in Kirkcaldy.[3] He argued that people in Leicester had lower rates of smallpox than Glasgow because of improved sanitation, a river passing through the town and its inhabitants were encouraged to go outside and get as much fresh air as possible.[3]

Biggs gave evidence against vaccination to the Royal Commission which was set up to investigate the efficacy of vaccination against smallpox.[2][4] 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.[5] 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.[6] 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]

Vegetarianism

Biggs and his wife Catherine were vegetarian.[7] In 1896, he was president of the Leicester Food Reform Society. Biggs was involved in vegetarianism activism and attended a Vegetarian Society meeting in Leicester in 1910.[8]

Selected publications

References

  1. ^ 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.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ a b "Anti-Vaccination Meeting at Kirkcaldy". The Evening Telegraph. March 6, 1901. (subscription required)
  4. ^ 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)
  5. ^ 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
  6. ^ 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)
  7. ^ Gregory, James Richard Thomas Elliott (2002). "Biographical Index of British Vegetarians and Food reformers of the Victorian Era". The Vegetarian Movement in Britain c.1840–1901: A Study of Its Development, Personnel and Wider Connections (PDF). Vol. 2. University of Southampton. p. 15.
  8. ^ "Vegetarian May Meetings in Leicester". The Leicester Mail. May 10, 1910. p. 3. (subscription required)
Allikas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._T._Biggs
No tags for this post.