William Tebb 1830–1917

Meet the most prominent anti-vaxxer of his day

William Tebb, born in Chorltonupon-Medlock, Manchester, to a nonconformist family, was a 19th-century social agitator influenced by the writings of reformers such as John Bright,

Richard Cobden and Robert Owen.

In 1852, Tebb visited the Hopedale Community in Massachusetts, USA, run by Christian social reformer Adin Ballou, where he met Mary Elizabeth Scott whom he married four years later. Returning to London in the 1860s, Tebb ran a successful company that made chemicals to bleach paper and used much of the profit to fund causes dear to his heart including food reform, vegetarianism, teetotalism, anti-vivisection and pacifism.

A radical liberal in his politics, Tebb was critical of vaccination primarily on the grounds of social liberty. He was personally prosecuted and fined 13 times for his refusal to vaccinate his third daughter.

In 1880, Tebb co-founded and became chairman of the London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination. He successfully lobbied for a royal commission into vaccination in 1886. Later, at the helm of the National Anti-Vaccination League, Tebb was highly instrumental in introducing conscientious-objection clauses into the 1898 and 1907 Vaccination Acts.