Victorian scientist criticised for anti-vaccine views in plaque honouring his life
A Victorian scientist behind the theory of evolution has been criticised for anti-vaccine views in a Labour council heritage project.
Alfred Russel Wallace independently arrived at a theory of natural selection in the 1850s. His findings were jointly presented alongside Charles Darwin's observations on evolution in 1858.
Wallace has since been honoured with an information panel in Leicester, where he began his career.
The panel installed following the Covid-19 pandemic states that Wallace was a "man of contradictions" who "opposed vaccination".
His anti-vaccine views are presented as problematic alongside his belief that races are not equal, and these opinions are contrasted with his advocacy of social reform and his environmental concerns.
The heritage panel informing the public about Wallace and his views was installed as part of a Leicester heritage trail, a council-funded project that sets out the history of notable buildings and residents.
On the panel for Wallace, it states that the scientist "strongly believed in social reform and the rights of the poor" and was "one of the first scientists to raise concerns about the environmental impact of human activity".
However, the panel adds that "despite these concerns for others" he "opposed vaccination due to his interpretation of the then available medical statistics".
It also states that "he wrongly didn't believe that all races were equal".
Wallace's panel is one of around 350 that have been erected in Leicester since the local council funded the heritage trail project in 2014.
Other heritage panels created during this period include those dedicated to Laurel Aitken ("The father of ska"), Leicester's Chinese community, and a panel on curry houses.
The tribute to Wallace was erected on College Street, the road on which he worked while in his 20s, before a scientific career in which he would gather evidence that species adapted under the strain of fatal environmental pressures.
Wallace taught in the Collegiate School in Leicester in 1844, before spending much of his career in the tropics, particularly in the Malay Archipelago, where he concluded that species evolved due to environmental pressures.
Leicester was the scene of public protests in the 19th century over the increasing use of vaccination in medicine, and the 1853 Vaccination Act, which made a smallpox vaccine compulsory for young children.
'Just being a good scientist'
Wallace wrote s for the National Anti-Vaccination League, formed in 1896, and wrote works such as "Vaccination a Delusion" and "Vaccination: Proved Useless and Dangerous", which argued on the basis of available data that the practice did not save lives.
Framing his concerns about vaccines negatively has drawn criticism from Dr George Beccaloni, an expert on the scientist, head of the Alfred Russel Wallace Correspondence Project, and founder of the Alfred Russel Wallace Memorial Fund.
Dr Beccaloni said: "It is very unfair to present his views on vaccination in a negative light – he was just being a good scientist – and opposing vaccination based on the available evidence."
Dr Beccaloni, himself an evolutionary biologist, has argued that the panel's claims about Wallace's racial views are unfair.
He said: "He believed in mental equality of races, and spoke out against imperialism and racism.
"He did believe that Victorian science and technology were superior in many ways, but frequently criticised Westerners for raping the Earth's resources and for poorly treating the 'common man'."
In his 1869 work The Malay Archipelago, Wallace complained that England was "still in a state of barbarism" despite its "high civilisation and its pure Christianity", and noted that wealth was used to control the population, many of whom were reduced to lives of crime.
Leicestershire council was contacted for comment.
