The inspiring Dorset farmer who was a pioneer in the field of vaccination

blackmorevaleApril 21, 20210 Comment0

A headstone in a church graveyard in Worth Matravers bears an epitaph for Dorset farmer Benjamin Jesty.

“He was an upright honest Man, particularly noted for having been the first Person (known) that introduced the Cow Pox by inoculation, and who from his great strength of mind made the Experiment from the (Cow) on his Wife and two Sons in the year 1774.”

The words were written by Jesty himself and are not that boastful, given that he is now being widely acknowledged as the pioneer of smallpox vaccination two centuries after his death. Just as the coronavirus shut down the world a year ago, a book was published coincidentally entitled Benjamin Jesty: the Grandfather of Vaccination. The author is Patrick John Pead, a retired microbiologist who worked for the Public Health Laboratory Service and who spent 40 years establishing Jesty’s credentials as the person who developed the vaccine.

Benjamin Jesty: the Grandfather of Vaccination

He says that English physician Dr Edward Jenner is widely given historic credit for developing the vaccine more than 20 years after Jesty. But says Pead: “It is now historically appropriate to recognise that Benjamin Jesty, the Dorset yeoman farmer, preceded Jenner by being the first to devise and perform vaccinations with cowpox to protect against smallpox. There is no doubt that Jenner brought vaccination to the world through his persistent hard work and persuasion. But equally, Dorset was the true birthplace of vaccination.”

Born in Yetminster in 1736, Jesty married Elizabeth Notley in Longburton in 1770. They lived at Upbury Farm, next to the church – a blue plaque from the Yetminster Local History Society records the fact. Smallpox was a leading cause of death in the 18th century, killing an estimated 400,000 Europeans each year.

Upbury Farm

Cowpox, a milder disease, was also common but folklore said that dairymaids who contracted cowpox from cattle didn’t seem to catch smallpox. With the first two of the couple’s seven children born, there was an outbreak of cowpox in nearby Chetnole. Jesty went to the farm and vaccinated his wife and young boys by scratching their arms and introducing pus from the udder of an infected cow. The cowpox ran its course and the boys came through easily with just mild fevers, although Elizabeth took longer to recover. The treatment’s value was demonstrated in the years which followed when the two boys, exposed to smallpox, failed to catch the disease.

However, history relates that Jesty’s experiment was met with hostility by his neighbours. He was labelled inhuman, and was “hooted at, reviled and pelted whenever he attended markets in the neighbourhood”. The introduction of an animal disease into a human body was thought disgusting.

In 1797 the family moved from Yetminster, when Jesty took up the tenancy of Downshay Manor Farm in Worth Matravers about the time that Jenner began to spread the refined vaccination worldwide. Vaccination is not a discovery or medical breakthrough but a development from variolation, substituting cowpox as an inoculum instead of smallpox. The World Health Organisation officially declared smallpox to be eradicated worldwide in 1979.

Down on the coast Dr Andrew Bell, rector of Swanage, became a friend of the farmer. An account of Jesty’s vaccinations was documented by Bell, who went on to vaccinate 200 of his parishioners.

Jesty told Bell: “There is little risk in introducing into the human constitution matter from the cow as we already without danger eat the flesh and blood, drink the milk and cover ourselves with the skin of this innocuous animal”.

As news of Jesty’s work spread, he received an invitation in 1805 to visit the offices of the Original Vaccine Pock Institute in London. He travelled with his eldest son, who was willingly inoculated with live smallpox to test his resilience to the disease. He succeeded. The institute awarded Jesty a pair of gold mounted lancets, a testimonial scroll, 15 guineas expenses, and arranged for a three-quarters lifesize portrait to be painted in oils by artist Michael Sharp.

The story goes that the Dorset farmer was an impatient sitter who could only be kept quiet by the artist’s wife playing to him on the piano. Surgeon Alfred Haviland, on seeing an engraving of Jesty, described the subject as “a good specimen of the fine old English yeoman, dressed in knee breeches, extensive double-breasted waistcoat, and no small amount of broadcloth”.

Added Pead: “Sharp captured a dignified pose: the portly farmer exudes an air of sturdiness and reliability. We should all draw inspiration from the ingenuity and courage of this humble Dorset farmer.”

Jesty died in 1816 and his portrait was handed down through two generations but went missing in 1884. Pead found it 120 years later in South Africa, in the home of a branch of the Jesty family. It was bought by The Wellcome Trust in 2006 and how hangs in its headquarters in London.

His grave is in the churchyard of St Nicholas of Myra in Worth Matravers. He published notice of his vaccinations posthumously, having written his own headstone epitaph. His wife Elizabeth showed commendable integrity when she added the word “(known)” to the text but rumours of previous cowpox vaccinators remain unsubstantiated.

In writing about the havoc caused by covid-19, West Dorset MP Chris Loder paid his own tribute to Jesty. “He was the first to introduce the idea that those people infected with cowpox, a relatively mild disease, could be protected against smallpox, by administering the less virulent virus. Dr Jenner is given historic credit for developing the smallpox vaccine, more than 20 years later in 1796, but in truth it’s West Dorset’s own ‘Farmer Jesty’ who we have to thank for the pioneering medical discovery that is still saving lives today.”