Compulsory Vaccination Report of a Public Meeting, held in the Marylebone Vestry Hall, London, on Wednesday evening, October 19, 1870.

In this vivid transcription of a Victorian public meeting, listeners are taken back to Marylebone Vestry Hall on an October evening in 1870. The Anti‑Compulsory Vaccination League gathers residents, physicians, and curious onlookers to debate a law that forces small‑pox inoculation on the populace. The assembled crowd hears impassioned arguments about personal liberty, alleged medical hazards, and the tragic fate of infants caught in the controversy.

Speakers such as Dr. Lankester and representatives of the league raise grim anecdotes of child deaths, contrasting them with the promise of protection promised by vaccination advocates. The chair, a local vestryman, stresses that the meeting is not a profit‑making venture but a protest against what they see as state overreach. The recording captures the earnest, sometimes heated, exchange that reveals both the scientific uncertainty and the social anxieties of the era.