Anti-vaccination riots of 1885

MOMENT IN TIME: SEPTEMBER 28, 1885

This drawing by Robert Harris is titled “Incident of the smallpox epidemic, Montréal.” It illustrates sanitary police removing patients from the public through the use of force, contemporary to the anti-vaccination riots of 1885. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE

Anti-vaccine riots erupt in Montreal

In early 1885, a conductor for the Grand Trunk Railway sparked a smallpox outbreak in Montreal. Local public-health authorities hoped to tame the spread with a vaccination campaign. As reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, it went badly. Likely because of unhygienic conditions, some recipients of the shots contracted erysipelas, an infection that causes painful rashes. The vaccine program was suspended for three months amid worries of a bad batch. Meanwhile, both the disease and fear of inoculation spread in the city’s working class French-speaking neighbourhoods. Rumours spread that administrators of the vaccine would tie children down to receive their shots. By September, police were physically hauling recalcitrant infected people away from crowded homes to better isolate them. On Sept. 28 of that year, the local board of health announced vaccination would become mandatory. A mob answered back with violence, sacking a public-health office, smashing pharmacy windows, stabbing the chief of police and chanting anti-English slogans. Armed police finally dispersed the rioters by clubbing them and firing rifles above their heads. On Sept. 23, 2021, the government of Quebec used gentler measures to disperse present-day anti-vaccine protesters, by passing a law to ban those demonstrations at various locations, including outside of schools and hospitals. Eric Andrew-Gee