VACCINATION OF IMMIGRANTS Vaccination Inquirer Vol 5 p112-114
Letter to William Tebb
"BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, May 7th, 1883.
"DEAR SIR,I found the Vaccination tyranny much more than
sentiment on board the Adriatic. Aboard-ship, as everywhere, it has attained
terrible proportions, which makes it probable that, in the near future, it will become The
Great Terror that shall cause that as many as will not worship the image of the
beast shall be killed, and that no man may buy or sell save he that has the
mark of the beast.
"The first intimation I had that Vaccination was a requisite for
free travel in America was an Important Notice on the stairway to the effect
that passengers not provided with certificates of Vaccination were liable to be detained
in quarantine on arrival, and that the ships medical officer was prepared to give
certificates to those unprovided on showing marks of successful Vaccination.
"In a few days, I heard of this ships medical officer
magnifying his office down among the women and children. I conversed with one young woman
who had submitted to the great ordinance, and, after characterising the whole business as
the most idiotic folly of the times, I begged of her to suck the poison out of her arm.
But many hours had elapsed, and the endeavour failed. Day by day she had to carry her
burden of pain until she landed. Whether she is now rejoicing in enhanced health as a
consequence of the small-pox proofing process, or whether she is suffering from the weary
illness that is often its accident I have no means of knowing.
"The bulk of the passengers were Irish, German, and Welsh ; there were very few English. I held many small indignation meetings, and did all in my power to enlighten them as to the filth, fraud, and folly of Vaccination. I trust I did a little good, and sowed a little seed that may some day and somewhere produce fruit.
"I was anxious to know to what extent the immigration Vaccination law was enforced
at New York, and had a chat on the subject with the chief steward. His information was
terrifying. Said he, When we get to New York the doctor comes aboard, with
half-a-dozen policemen, and you have to be vaccinated. But, said I,
suppose you refuse to be vaccinated, what then? Then theyll sling
you into the tender, and clap you in jail till you submit. But I wont be
vaccinated. Ill stay out of New York for ever first. He replied, No use;
youd have to be. Five of our crew, once, refused to be done; but they just put
em into quarantine and kept em there until they came to. They might as well
have been done first as last; they only delayed the vessel.
"I tell you, I felt bad after this recital, and came to the
conclusion that America was closed against the unvaccinated anti-vaccinator, and that he
was fast falling into the condition of the American negro-slave who was hunted down
everywhere by everybody.
"One morning it was rumoured that the doctor was coming to examine
the passengers, and I went with two friends to the surgery to state our objections. I told
him that we had been vaccinated, if that fact would let us pass without further trouble,
we could satisfy him; but if not, vaccinated we would never be. Like most doctors, he was
without capacity to understand our conscientious objections, and the degradation involved
in submission to the rite. He curtly told us the law was not his; it was the United States
law. He should come forward at two oclock, and if we shewed him that we had been
vaccinated, he would give us a certificate, and, if not, he would vaccinate us if we
chose; if not, we must take the risk of passing the doctor at the port. It mattered
nothing to him.
"About two oclock there was a great commotion forard.
Such a stripping of clothes, rolling up of sleeves, and searching for marks.
Some were craning their necks over their shoulders in a half-hopeless search after
obliterated or invisible scars; some calling in the help of a neighbour to make them out;
and some raising an excited discussion as to whether an indentation was a vaccination
mark, or forgotten boil, and going into an ecstasy of satisfaction when they had settled
it was exactly what was wanted.
Others, in despair of vaccination marks, recollected that they had had
small-pox, and set up a search for pox-marks. Some, after a protracted quest for marks,
vaccine or variolous, put on their coats sadly, with the air of criminals about to be
hanged. It was a sight to make men blush with shame for the devilish superstition that has
taken possession of the Christian civilization of the nineteenth century.
"By-and-by came the doctor in his gold-laced cap, with his bottle
of lymph, pure from the sores of children or heifers buttock, and
commenced operations. First a rope was stretched from a post, and held by two stewards in
a horse-shoe form, and into this enclosure passed, one by one, the victims of an insane
medical legislation, and bared their arms to the Medical Ignoramus, who stood on the other
side. If he there saw the orthodox scars, he forthwith bestowed a ticket like this:--
WHITE STAR LINE |
Which further had this exhortation on the back:--
PASS Keep this card to avoid detention at quarantine, and on railroad in the United States. |
"If a poor wretch could not show vaccine or pock marks, he got no ticket, and was
asked whether he would be vaccinated, or risk being stopped at landing. All preferred the
first alternative as the lesser evil. The doctor, dipping his lancet in the bottle of
mystery, wiped it on a spot on the arm, and cut and cross-cut the skin, and then, after
rapidly stretching and closing the incisions with his thumbs, gave the wretch his ticket
and passed him on. Such was the ordinance of Vaccinationa sight not to be forgotten.
A crowd of hundreds passing forward to prostrate their conscience or manhood, or lack of
them, at the shrine of the most outrageous humbug of these latter days! A mixed crowd of
big and little, fat and lean, dirty and clean, reputable and disreputable, sober and
drunken, healthy and diseased, all ground down to the dead level of VACCINATED. There was
nothing in common among them save their degradation, and, as I thought, the most degraded
of the lot was the Vaccinator. How a man with any sense of decency and the congruity of
things could, for mere pay, consent to the folly that the individuals of such a
heterogenous crowd were all alike liable to small-pox, and were all alike saved by
his performance, passes my understanding. It is hard to believe in a mans sincerity
in view of such absurdity; and yet he may be sincere. When a lie is taught, and still more
when a lie is practised, it confounds the intellect, and is ultimately taken for the truth
of truth.
"I am fain to believe that not much harm was done to those
vaccinated. After the operation, there was a mighty scuttling off into secret corners,
with sucking and spitting. Happily I had a store of borax, and dispensed it liberally with
energetic advice. Anyhow, I heard little of the Vaccination taking. Perhaps
the matter was not good, but it mattered not.
"Yours truly, "F. SCRIMSHAW."
"To Mr. WILLIAM TEBB."