Poverty
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"It is also in the interests of a tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost of protecting themselves by arms and be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion."- Aristotle in Politics, J. Sinclair translation, pg. 226, 1962

[You can imagine the level of poverty in smallpox era (1, 2,) when you know the level today, and in the 1960's, yet we are meant to to believe smallpox vaccination is the only defence against poor diet, dire sanitation, overcrowding, dirty water, cold, poor ventilation, depression etc.   Absurd. ]

See: Infection & nutrition  Well being  Infant death rate (under 1 year old)

Main factor:
Sanitation
Co-factors
Toxic air
Dirty water
Malnutrition (smallpox era)
Overcrowding

Quotes
According to the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University, 18% of children in the U.S. live below the federal poverty level ($20,650 a year for a family of four) and 38% of children live in low-income families.

[2006 UK] UK CHILD POVERTY - THE FACTS  New figures show that at least 3.4 million children in the UK are blighted by destitution, their parents too poor to feed, clothe or shelter them properly. THERE are currently 3.4 million children in poverty, 27 per cent of all British children.  THE UK has the fourth highest level of child poverty of all 25 European Union countries. AROUND five per cent of all children live in severe poverty.

Smallpox era
[Poor area Whitechapel has greater death rate than affluent area--Hamstead] Mr. Alfred Milnes, M.A., in his masterly paper, printed in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. LX., Part III., September, 1897, shows conclusively that the reduction in infant mortality is entirely due to improved sanitation, children being peculiarly susceptible to the effect of insanitary conditions. He has extracted from the 45th and 55th Reports of the Registrar-General the annual average death-rate per million living in the decade 1871-80 and in the decade 1881-90. For the towns of Whitechapel and Hampstead, averaging these two decades, it appears that the mortality for all ages is about 7,300 per million living greater in Whitechapel than in Hampstead, while for those under five years old the mortality of Whitechapel is about 37,500 per million living more than the mortality in Hampstead, showing that the conditions adverse to life in Whitechapel are in the case of infants under five years five times more fatal than they are upon the population taken as a whole. These figures show that improved sanitation is quite sufficient to account for the reduced fatality from small-pox in children. [1921] Vaccination and the State By Arnold Lupton MP.

This evidence is sufficient to show that the epidemic of 1885 was not due to want of Vaccination. The fact is, parts of Montreal were in a very filthy condition. The French-Canadian paper Le Monde said, referring to the sewers: "The proof that they are in a bad state is that the stench from the street gullies in certain parts of the city is so powerful as to create nausea in passers by."   On the 25th November, 1885, Montreal correspondent of the Toronto Mail wrote: " The three Wards of St. Mary, St. James, and St. Lewis have contributed about 90 per cent, of the deaths throughout. It is in these wards that the 10,000 cesspools exist which breed the small-pox and other epidemics which help to fill up the mortality reports of the city."  On the 25th November, 1885, the Montreal Herald reported an interview with Dr. Garceau of Boston, Mass., who said, referring to the epidemic of small-pox: " I attribute the chief cause to the frightful system of cesspits."  Since that time Montreal has greatly improved its sanitary condition, with the consequent diminution of disease. Mulhall gave the general death-rate in that town during the years 1878-1880 as 37 per thousand. The English Registrar-General gave the death-rate for the years 1906-1910 at a little over 22 per thousand. Probably more recent figures will show a still lower death-rate. [1921] Vaccination and the State By Arnold Lupton MP.

"Noticing the class of people among whom the disease is most fatal, I was led to the conclusion that the cause in most cases was dirt, and that vaccination was powerless to prevent it. I found that where there was most overcrowding there smallpox was most prevalent. The worst case I have ever seen occurred three weeks after re-vaccination."--- Dr Allinson 

"WE have for some time past been hearing of the epidemic of smallpox in Capetown, and of the vigorous measures adopted to enforce vaccination and isolation, but we have heard little of the sanitary condition of the place. From an article in the Cape Times, however, we obtain the following information
    Capetown is buying its experience at a heavy price. Fifty thousand pounds spent on a reservoir that will not hold water is a lesson that should not require to be repeated. Pestilence abounding (for we have it in many forms), the fruit of long-continued filth and neglect, scarcity of water, foul, unkempt, "unlovely" streets, seas of mud in the winter and hurricanes of dust in the summer— worst of all, a population ignorant as Arctic bears of sanitary principles, dead in a large proportion to the commonest instincts of decency. We have taken very busily to flushing, scouring, and quarantining, and making such atonement as is possible for past neglect and apathy. But too late; the retribution has come, as come it must, when ever the plain dictates of common sense and the laws of Nature are persistently violated. There is a very large element in the population of Capetown that exists only to propagate dirt, and in this they move and have their being. They make dirt as silkworms spin cocoons. They are dirty by instinct, dirty by habit, and, alas! dirty by necessity. With instinct, habit, and necessity constraining them, how can they be otherwise? Whole quarters of the town have for a long time been so abandoned to dirt, that only an earthquake could efface the evil effects on soil and atmosphere; and only if the earthquake should swallow up the inhabitants would there be some hope for these localities in the future. But let the truth be realised; a people born, bred, and educated in dirt will bear fruit after their kind. Spite of sanitary inspectors and municipal codes, they will be dirty; they will conquer all with dirt, and subdue the very sky to its influence. There is but one way, we believe, of overcoming this destructive element, and that is by a process of sap and mine. Habits must be changed. The dirt-loving must be made dirt-hating. There are elements in our population that are not easily impressed and even approached. But we decline to believe the thing impossible, and it ought to be tried. Capetown must go from bad to worse if sanitary regulations are not more strictly enforced; for its population is increasing, its open spaces are diminishing, and the foes to health are augmenting in proportion."----- CONDITION OF CAPETOWN. Vaccination Inquirer 1883. Vol 5, p15

[Report by Dr. Airy in Supplement to 11th Annual Report of the Local Government Board.]
    "A. house, rented at £6, stands in a flat swampy meadow, liable to be flooded. It is approached by a causeway of faggots laid across the swamp. Two rooms on the ground floor, and two above. One of the lower rooms is a damp, cold, dirty room that serves as scullery, rubbish-hole, and slop sink. Slops are emptied at one corner of this room where a hollow has been excavated in the rough brick floor, communicating, by a large hole broken through the base of the wall, with a corresponding hollow in the mud outside, whence the filth soaks away through the surrounding grass and its own accumulated sediment. In this room nine persons slept! A loose-made door opens directly into the shed where sheep, more or less diseased, were kept. The mother had been already attended for typhus and puerperal fever in this same house! A cattle shed also adjoins the cottage. Eight persons had smallpox, and two died. Very defective drainage reported. The stinking carcasses of two sheep lay near the cottage at the time the small-pox was in the house."….not one of the inmates appears to have been unvaccinated!"---OUTBREAK OF SMALLPOX AT BOURNE BRIDGE.  Vaccination Inquirer 1883. Vol 5, p15

"What neighbourhoods do they visit? The filthiest. What towns do they select? Those where sanitary conditions are the most neglected. Note the last small-pox epidemic, and take Leeds as an example. Who were the victims? The very lowest classes of society, children that were filthy, neglected, and ill fed, others living in houses that were overcrowded, destitute of proper ventilation, and in courts and alleys where sanitation is a term unknown; adults who are tramps, drunkards, prostitutes, men and women without homes, wanderers,—with a very modest sprinkling of the very lowest sections of the working classes; these formed 7-10ths of the patients who passed through the hospital of the Leeds Union, and these are the very self-same people, resident in the same houses, streets, and neighbourhoods, who would have fallen the first victims to any other epidemic which had sprung up. If they had not yielded to the small-pox they would have succumbed to scarlet fever, typhoid, or the like. If the unsanitary surroundings are there, and the physically deteriorated in health within reach, then the conditions for producing an epidemic are present, and the result cannot fail to be disastrous. The strong and healthy do not take the small-pox. If we divide Leeds in the centre due north and south, nearly all the cases occurred in the eastern half of the town,—the healthiest half, the western, was free from the scourge. Belgravia and May Fair had no small-pox, but there was plenty of it in the narrow streets and the courts and alleys situate in the east of London. Again, our healthiest towns, such as Leamington, Cheltenham, Brighton, Hastings, and Scarbro', had little or no small-pox during the recent epidemic, whilst Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, and similar large centres of industry suffered severely. Do not these facts confirm our previously expressed opinions that small-pox is a filth-disease, and like all filth-diseases, of the zymotic order, the only protection is in general and wide-spread cleanliness?"---JNO. PICKERING, F.S.S., F.R.G.S. [1876. THE STATISTICS OF THE MEDICAL OFFICERS TO THE LEEDS SMALL-POX HOSPITAL EXPOSED AND REFUTED]