THE NOBLE CITIZEN
With smallpox epidemics taking the lives of one in four Scottish children in the late 1700s, Stirlingshire weaver William ‘Citizen’ Jaffray demonstrated the value of benevolence in uncertain times by inoculating thousands of youngsters, says Rosie Morton
Stirlingshire weaver 'Citizen' Jaffray saved thousands of lives through inoculation during the smallpox epidemic
In the bleakest of times there is often comfort to be found in dusting off the old history books. Casting a glance at the life of William ‘Citizen’ Jaffray, a master weaver from Stirlingshire who successfully inoculated nearly 16,000 children against smallpox at his own expense, the power of unyielding benevolence in the face of a global pandemic is a heart-warming tale in these troubled times.
Life in 18th-century Scotland was unremittingly hard. Even as late as 1800 no country in Europe had an average life expectancy higher than 40 years of age, and Scotland’s was in the high thirties. Plagued by smallpox outbreaks, it is estimated that between 1783 and 1800 one in every five Scottish deaths were caused by the deadly and highly contagious virus, with more than a third of those fatalities being accounted for by children under the age of 10.
For Jaffray, a humanitarian born in 1749 in Cambusbarron, a small village just two miles from Stirling, the sheer magnitude of the epidemic, and crucially the youth of so many of the victims, jolted him into action. In his day, the disease killed one in four children, plus around 400,000 Europeans each year (and it killed indiscriminately, with that number including five reigning monarchs from Spain, Russia, Monaco, France and Bavaria).
There was no cure for smallpox, which was a slow, lingering but certain death.
Yet there was, then as now, hope in the shape of a vaccine, even if the science of
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He inoculated 16,000 children against smallpox at his own expense
immunology was little known and even less understood. One of the key figures in introducing preventative measures was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who championed and promoted inoculation against smallpox across Britain and Western Europe. In the 1720s her husband was the British Ambassador in Constantinople, and it was while living in the Ottoman capital that Montagu first witnessed the practice of inoculation by taking scrapings from smallpox blisters and introducing them through a small cut in the arm to encourage antibodies.
Further proof of the possibilities of vaccination was also being provided by the work of self-taught Shetland physician John Williamson (universally known by his nickname Johnnie Notions). The isolated nature of the Northern Isles meant they were uniquely susceptible to smallpox, with an outbreak in 1700 killing one third of Shetlanders and two thirds of the population of Fair Isle. Williamson had heard of Montagu’s theories on vaccination and in the mid- to late-1700s he vaccinated over 3,000 islanders with a culture made from degraded smallpox pus, which he buried underground with camphor for around seven years before administering it. He is reputed to have never lost a patient.
However, Montagu’s theories were brought to wider attention by the work of Dr Edward Jenner, a Gloucestershire physician and scientist who studied medicine at the University of St Andrews. With Montagu’s information as his starting point, he observed that milk maids who caught cowpox were less affected by smallpox. Through a rather grisly experiment on his gardener’s son, James Phipps, he tested this hypothesis by making a tiny subcutaneous incision and introducing pus from an infected cowpox blister. A slight mark rose on the boy’s skin, but he soon recovered, and when exposed to smallpox he was found to be immune. Vaccinations as we know them – named after the Latin ‘vacca’, meaning ‘cow’ – were born.
Jaffray was enormously enthused by the extraordinary, life-saving possibilities of the new smallpox vaccination. Undeterred by his lack of medical knowledge, he set about acquiring the information, skills and equipment required to inoculate Cambusbarron’s children by writing to an
Edinburgh surgeon and distant relation, James Bryce.
Jaffray was fortunate that he was independently wealthy from his successful weaving business, which he used to entirely self-fund his endeavours. After successfully experimenting on his own son, Jaffray walked the streets with his medical supplies, even completing a sixteen-mile round-trip to Doune, and inoculated every family in Cambusbarron apart from two who declined the offer. When both families which declined his help later lost a child to smallpox, word spread quickly. According to official records not one of the children Jaffray inoculated died of the disease.
It was this remarkable selflessness and exemplary citizenship – as well as his political bent, fiercely opposing the rigorous feudal system and publicly endorsing the egalitarian and libertarian principles of the French Revolution, including the principle of democracy – that earned him the nickname ‘Citizen’. He undoubtedly saved a huge number of his neighbours from a painful and avoidable death.
His exploits did not end there. A conscientious Christian, he was also instrumental in the release of a young West Indies woman whom he discovered on a boat on the Forth and Clyde Canal, which was returning to her Scottish owner’s estate in Jamaica. Taking her before magistrates in Glasgow, Jaffray freed the woman on the basis that slavery had been formally abolished in Scotland in the famous 1687 ‘Tumbling Lassie’ case at the Court of Session, where the court’s ruling ended: ‘But we have no slaves in Scotland, and mothers cannot sell their bairns.’
Seven years after Jaffray’s death in 1835, an article was published in the Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, stating that his gargantuan efforts had saved at least 4,000 lives. ‘The motive which stimulated the Citizen in this, the cause of humanity, was as generous and disinterested as the zeal and perseverance with which he continued were laudable; for at the time he commenced operations, the price for inoculating each child was half a guinea, at the least.
‘To see the Citizen setting out upon a vaccinating tour, was quite a treat. Dressed, in the winter, with his long coat and a spencer – his locks only slightly coloured with age, neatly combed down, and curling naturally around his ears... his face beaming with humanity – he considered himself as the messenger of good only; the world and its wealth, which he never sought much after, and which never pressed themselves into his service, he left, upon those occasions, entirely behind.’
Even in death, Citizen Jaffray’s generosity remained evident. Perturbed by the horrors committed in Edinburgh by graverobbers such as Burke and Hare, Jaffray insisted that his body was to be donated for scientific purposes (although ultimately it was not required).
History has a habit of repeating itself. As we find ourselves back in the grip of a deadly and highly contagious disease it is easier to marvel at Jaffray’s remarkable foresight and in the courage he displayed to put himself in harm’s way so often and for so long. He was not just a true son of the Scottish Enlightenment, but the very picture of a model citizen.
Additional research by Craig Heaney
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None of the children Jaffray inoculated died of the disease