J. T. Biggs

John Thomas Biggs (1847–1929) was an English sanitary engineer and activist for anti-vaccination and vegetarianism.

Anti-vaccination

Biggs worked as a sanitary and waterworks engineer. Biggs was a member of the Leicester Board of Guardians. It became known as the "Great Leicester Demonstration" with an estimated 80,000 protestors that gathered in the marketplace with anti-vaccination banners. He argued that people in Leicester had lower rates of smallpox than Glasgow because of improved sanitation, a river passing through the town and its inhabitants were encouraged to go outside and get as much fresh air as possible. Biggs testified to the Royal Commission that an anti-vaccination prisoner had been thrown into a "black hole" and made to suffer "every possible degradation". He also stated that a child had caught "a sort of foot-and-mouth disease" from calf-lymph vaccination. Biggs answered 3000 questions and produced 51 statistical tables and 15 diagrams. An error in the official figures during his cross-examination caused a recalculation of his data which took a further two years. His anti-vaccination arguments were criticized in The Lancet journal over two decades. In 1896, he was president of the Leicester Food Reform Society. Biggs was involved in vegetarianism activism and attended a Vegetarian Society meeting in Leicester in 1910.

Selected publications

Sanitation Versus Vaccination (London: National Anti-Vaccination League, 1912)