In 1853 “Lord Lyttelton, as a private member, brought in a bill to parliament to make vaccination compulsory in England. The bill passed through both Houses without opposition, and with hardly any debate except on points of detail”. This became the first compulsory Vaccination Act 1853. [1, 2]
Stunningly the “Act of Parliament of 1853 had no section devoted to the “Definition of Terms”; there was no definition of cowpox or genuine vaccine, an omission all the more remarkable that variolous matter was then being used as vaccine, on the pretext that it had “ passed through the cow. Although a medical dogma was therein established by the State, the doctrine was not formulated.” The Act was “simply a notorious empirical practice that was established under pains and penalties”, not of any principle of epidemiology or pathology.
“…The vaccinated are safe against smallpox because they, in fact, have had it ”
In 1853 the Anti-Vaccination Leauge was formed in London.
The Vaccination Act of 1840 made variolation, inoculation with smallpox (variola), illegal. Inoculation with the same method but using cowpox (vaccinia), the process called vaccination, was legal and under the Poor Law Act was administered free. [?]