The initial refusal by the Loughrea Workhouse hospital to accept smallpox patients was smartly over ruled by the Local Government Board (LGB ). It suggested that some out-houses or offices, at the hospital, could be converted to receive the patients while keeping them separate from the other sick. It was satisfied that the resident doctor there, Dr Lynch, ‘will afford valuable advice and assistance’. The board warned that it was essential smallpox sufferers were kept isolated from other people. However, the Loughrea Board of Guardians, with responsibility for the hospital, did not heed the rebuke.
Dr WJM Leonard, Medical Officer of the Athenry Dispensary, had worked tirelessly dealing with the outbreak of smallpox in his area, which is yet in its infancy. He even converted out-buildings at his house of residence into a make-shift hospital while other arrangements were being made. Unfortunately, this resulted in a relative of his being ‘attacked by the disease’.
He reported another case to the LGB, that of Mary Gallagher, who lived with her parents, two sisters and her brother, in one small room, which they call ‘home’. He feared that unless prompt measures were taken ‘this dreadful disease will spread beyond control’. Miss Gallagher lived at Larkin’s Lane. He asked that a ‘proper mode of conveyance’ be supplied to take her to the Loughrea hospital.
A furious letter
The ‘mode of conveyance’, or ambulance, was a simple covered wagon with a horse and driver. The ambulance collected its patient in Athenry, and proceeded cross country, to the Loughrea hospital.
Unfortunately, it became known that the patient within the wagon was suffering from smallpox. It was market day in Loughrea, and the town was crowded. As the ambulance began to make its way through the crowds there were shouts, and fists raised in anger. ‘People got very excited’ and would have sent the van back to where it came from ‘were it not for the interference of the constabulary’. The constabulary, however, could not prevent the ambulance being stopped, its driver removed, and the horse unbridled. Somehow the patient was made walk away, while the wagon was taken to a waste place in the town, and set on fire.
The following day, April 16 1875, an indignant vice chairman of the Loughrea Board of Guardians, JH Blake JP, wrote a furious letter to the Local Government Board, protesting at the manner with which Dr Leonard had a patient, who was not seriously ill, taken through a crowded Loughrea at 5 pm on market day.
Blake expressed amazement that Dr Leonard ‘would direct a smallpox patient to be driven nine miles through a district where the disease had not yet appeared, and through a town densely populated’. He thought Dr Leonard had acted most injudiciously.
Terror and alarm
The health authority’s defence against smallpox was limited, but removing a sufferer from his/her place of residence was paramount. Particularly as many of the sufferers were among the poor and lived in crowded and unhygienic conditions. Places where sufferers could be isolated and treated for the disease, were fast closing their doors to them. Taking patients to the Loughrea hospital were to be specifically banned as the following irate letter from the Loughrea Town Commissioners to the LGB makes clear: ‘that the medical officer at Athenry having on Thursday last, April 15 instant, being the market day, caused to be sent to the workhouse here a smallpox patient, causing great terror and alarm to the people, which has not, up to the present, subsided, but on the contrary, has increased owing to a rumour that another patient is to be taken this day to the workhouse from Athenry.
‘The Commissioners in the interest of the public, and of order, request the LGB to take immediate action in preventing any other smallpox patients being taken from Athenry or elsewhere, to the workhouse here (Loughrea ); but that suitable hospital accommodation should forthwith be provided in Athenry, or the neighbourhood, for the persons afflicted with the disease.’
A suitable site
Dr Brodie, the Local Government Inspector in Galway, was then working with the hard-pressed Dr Leonard in trying to find suitable accommodation for smallpox patients.
In his own report to the LGB (April 19 ) he said that he met Mr James Clarke, a member of the Loughrea Board of Guardians, ‘who in no uncertain terms expressed his anger at Dr Leonard for sending a smallpox patient through the town of Loughrea, on Market day, causing the riot’. However, Brodie added, ‘in justice to Dr Leonard he has displayed so much energy in coping with the disease that I am certain his directions regarding the removal of patients to hospital will be judiciously exercised.’
But Brodie believed that some good had come out of the unfortunate riot business. The Loughrea guardians, no doubt well aware of their duties to the sick in their area, have written to a firm in London requesting it to forward, ‘without delay’ information on their iron hospitals’ which are ready made, and capable of accommodating 12 patients.
Already Dr Leonard, James Clarke and Brodie had visited several places in the Athenry neighbourhood, to find a suitable site for the erection of the iron hospital. But Brodie feared that what ever site is selected it will not be acceptable by the citizens.
Ravages will follow
The Local Government Board in acquainting Dublin Castle with the disturbing events to date, could not resist commenting ‘that the inhabitants of Athenry and the surrounding neighbourhood, appear to be more alarmed at the means used for the abatement of smallpox than the ravages which will too surely follow from the neglect of the immediate removal of each case to hospital’.
Next week: Major objections to the location of the iron hospital.
NOTES: Edward Jenner’s brilliant discovery that inoculation with the much milder cowpox was so successful that from 1853 it was made compulsory for all infants in the United Kingdom and Ireland. This was a radical move for the British parliament. Parents who did not produce proof that their child was vaccinated were fined, and eventually imprisoned if their resistance continued.
This created determined opposition in Britain, but had far less impact in Ireland. The British Anti-Vaccination League attacked the state’s ‘infringement on personal liberty’ and the medical risks involved. The law, it argued, was despotic and un-British. It gave the government power over citizens’ bodies.
Campaigners claimed that animal matter, ‘the filth of the cowshed’, was being injected into their children, along with other diseases such as syphilis. The league alleged a cover-up by the medical profession to hide evidence of deaths due to vaccination.
Their campaign was a success. Parents who opposed childhood vaccination on moral grounds could claim exemption by appearing before a special tribunal. This introduced a ‘conscientious objection’ clause in British law, which would become famous during World War I for men refusing compulsory military service.
Ireland was not included in this new vaccination exemption scheme. An Irish Anti-Vaccination League emerged in 1898, but never achieved the same level of success as in England. That same year The Skibbereen Eagle observed: ‘Englishmen sneer frequently at Irish agitation, but to the Irish mind nothing could be more ludicrous than the anti-vaccination crusade’.
Sources include: House of Commons Report: Smallpox - Athenry, published August 13 1875, and essay on the anti - vaxxer movement in England and Ireland, by Dr Ciarán Wallace.
I am grateful to Norman Healy, antiquarian book dealer, for bringing this important story to my attention.
Listen to Tom Kenny and Ronnie O'Gorman elaborating on topics they have covered in this week's paper and much more in this week's Old Galway Diary Podcast.
