ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the inoculation of the poor, largely the children of the poor, against smallpox. It looks at three overlapping groups, namely charity children, the recipients of poor relief, and the working poor and their children. In eighteenth-century England almost all people had smallpox during their lives. Though its essential nature was not understood at the time, smallpox was a viral infection. From the mid 1760s general inoculations became increasingly common, at least in southern England. The initiative for parish inoculations most often came from the freeholders who served on the vestry and took their turns as overseers of the poor. In relation to London, the concerns about the dangers of inoculation may have inhibited the more responsible businesses and schemes without really impeding more irregular forms of plebeian inoculation. By the end of the eighteenth century, smallpox inoculation was a mass phenomenon.
