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J. T. Biggs
John Thomas Biggs (1847–1929) was an English sanitary engineer and activist for anti-vaccination and vegetarianism. Anti-vaccinationBiggs 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] VegetarianismBiggs 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
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