Sarah Chiswell
Sarah Chiswell
9 min read
Young Englishwoman who died of smallpox around 1714, and a friend of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Her tragic death prompted Lady Mary to champion variolation in England after observing the practice in the Ottoman Empire, indirectly contributing to the history of vaccination.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Died of smallpox around 1714, at a young age
- Close friend of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who described her death in her correspondence
- Her death motivated Lady Mary to adopt and promote the variolation she had witnessed in Constantinople (1717)
- An emblematic example of smallpox mortality before the introduction of inoculation in Great Britain
- Her memory helped legitimize Lady Mary's efforts to convince the English court to adopt variolation
Works & Achievements
An exchange of letters between Sarah Chiswell and Lady Mary, traces of which survive in the latter's correspondence. This exchange attests to their deep friendship and remains the principal document bearing witness to Sarah's existence.
A collection of letters published after Lady Mary's death, in which she recalls her English friends carried off by smallpox — among them Sarah Chiswell — and describes her campaign to introduce variolation in England.
A pioneering act directly motivated by the deaths of friends such as Sarah Chiswell: Lady Mary had her son inoculated, making him the first child of the English nobility to undergo the procedure, and thereby opening the door to variolation in England.
The first official trials in England, made possible by Lady Mary's advocacy — itself fuelled by the death of Sarah Chiswell. All six prisoners who were inoculated survived, validating the method and laying the groundwork for Jenner's vaccination.
Anecdotes
Sarah Chiswell was a young Englishwoman of good family and a close childhood friend of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Both had grown up in aristocratic circles where smallpox was a constant and dreaded threat, regularly carrying off loved ones and leaving survivors disfigured for life. Their friendship is documented in the correspondence Lady Mary addressed to her from the Ottoman Empire.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu speaks of Sarah's death with deep emotion in her letters. While observing the practice of variolation in Constantinople, she could not help thinking of her lost friend, wondering whether this Ottoman technique might have saved her. That grief became one of the driving forces behind her campaign to introduce variolation in England.
Sarah's death in 1714 occurred at a time when smallpox killed or disfigured on average one person in seven across Europe. Lady Mary herself contracted the disease in 1715 and survived, but at the cost of her eyelashes and permanent scars on her face — which made her all the more keenly committed to the cause of prevention.
When Lady Mary observed in Constantinople the "variolation parties" conducted by elderly Greek women, who introduced smallpox matter under the skin of healthy children to immunize them, she immediately thought of Sarah and the other friends the disease had taken. She had her own son Edward inoculated in March 1718 — the first child of an English nobleman to undergo the procedure.
The memory of Sarah Chiswell and the epidemics ravaging England drove Lady Mary to face the hostility of London physicians on her return in 1718. That fight led to clinical trials on prisoners at Newgate in 1721, then to the royal vaccination of the Princess of Wales's children — a chain of events that directly paved the way for Edward Jenner's work on the vaccine in 1796.
Primary Sources
The small-pox, so fatal and so general amongst us, is here rendered entirely harmless by the invention of engrafting [...] I am patriot enough to take pains to bring this useful invention into fashion in England.
I have seen this operation performed on more than a hundred children [...] I am satisfied of their safety, though I have looked on with all possible curiosity. The child or young patient complains very little, and in eight days' time is in as good health as before.
I cannot help wishing to inform you of a practice which has become widespread here and which I hope will one day spread to England for the benefit of our compatriots, and to spare other families the grief we have known.
A statistical report comparing the mortality rate of variolation (approximately 2%) with that of natural smallpox (approximately 20%), published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society to validate the practice introduced by Lady Mary.
Key Places
The city where Sarah Chiswell lived and where she died of smallpox around 1714. The English capital was regularly struck by smallpox epidemics across all social classes, including the aristocracy.
The Ottoman capital where Lady Mary Wortley Montagu stayed between 1717 and 1718 and observed the practice of variolation, inspired in part by the memory of Sarah Chiswell. It was there that she had her son Edward inoculated in March 1718.
The Ottoman city from which Lady Mary wrote her famous letter of 1 April 1717 describing variolation. This landmark text, motivated by grief for friends such as Sarah Chiswell, would set off a medical revolution across Europe.
The site where, in August 1721, the first official variolation trials in England were conducted on condemned prisoners, encouraged by Lady Mary. These experiments scientifically validated the practice and paved the way for its wider adoption.
The home region of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and most likely of the circle of friends to which Sarah Chiswell belonged. The aristocratic families of the English Midlands were bound together by strong social and epistolary networks.
