g
their illness, and the impropriety of the surgeons encouraging such
proceedings. Agreed that the surgeons be waited upon with a request
that they will not in future inoculate any person in their own houses
unless such person so inoculated be removed in a proper time."

In 1788 this old question of inoculation brought together the largest
attendance at any Vestry in Royston for a century, excepting perhaps
that upon Church rates in later years. This Vestry was held in the
Parish Church "for the purpose of taking into consideration and finally
settling the business respecting the small-pox and the inoculating the
poor of the town at the parish expense." Whereupon, says the old
record, "The parish divided upon the question and there appeared
twenty-five for inoculating the parish at the parish expense, and
seventeen against it. It is therefore ordered," &c.

In fifteen years the inoculating majority had disappeared, for in 1803
upon the question of small-pox _versus_ cow-pox, a meeting was held to
consider "whether a general inoculation with the _cow-pox_ should
immediately take place in this town, which was agreed _nem. con._"

At the end of the century we thus see that the question of a small-pox
prophylactic was wavering between the monstrous assumption that
everybody must necessarily have small-pox, and had better set about it,
and the milder notion of vaccine as an antidote, if the real thing
should come. The old custom of variolation had not been discarded, and
the experience of the Gloucestershire milkmaids had not crystalized
into the form of vaccination to be handed down by Jenner. At the
beginning of the century we find this item:--

"Order'd that there is no necessity for a General Inoculation, there
being no small-pox in the town (except in the Pest House), and that the
Overseers are hereby order'd to suspend the Business of a General
Inoculation _either with the Cow or Small-Pox_."

In general sanitary matters the local Parliament meant very well, but
the remedy for a grievance was a long way off. The constable was the
Inspector of Nuisances, and he must have sometimes come across heaps of
dung in the street. If he did find such a nuisance he had {46}
instructions "to make presentment to the Quarter Sessions if need be?"
A very dignified, but still a slow rate of getting the town clean, Mr.
Dogberry!

There was one respect in which the pauper of the last century was made
equal with the prince-