The Religious Politics of Smallpox Vaccination, 1899-1901

Abstract

Abstract In January 1900, John E. Cox filed a lawsuit in Third District Court, Salt Lake County, against the Salt Lake City Board of Education and the principal of Hamilton school, Samuel B. Doxey. Cox asserted that Doxey had violated the law on January 23 when he forbade his ten-year-old daughter, Florence Cox, to enter school on account of her failure to provide satisfactory proof of smallpox vaccination from a licensed medical doctor, a condition of school attendance. This condition existed due to the highly contagious nature of smallpox and the close social interaction that schools promoted. According to health authorities, a smallpox epidemic appeared to be imminent, with several cases of the disease in the Salt Lake Valley and two hundred more in the state. Yet Florence possessed “sound health” and no obvious signs of illness and, therefore, had been “wrongly excluded.” Cox’s attorney asserted: “Neither boards of health nor boards of education have a right to exclude unvaccinated children from schools, unless express authority is given by the Legislature or ordinance to that effect.” In the case at bar, “the health board is passing rules which in effect are legislative enactments.”1