By the time that W. Addington Willis expressed these sentiments in the second decade of the twentieth century, claims put forward by workers for compensation after developing anthrax during the course of their employment were commonplace. The landmark ruling – referred to in the previous chapter – in the case of Turvey v. Brintons, Limited (1904), and the subsequent enshrinement of anthrax within the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1906, enabled workers to bring a case for compensation against their employer(s). But while national legislation directed specifically towards anthrax (at least in humans) was a feature of the twentieth century, attempts to regulate the occurrence of the disease locally had been around for many years previously.

Here we will establish how and why the approach to regulation of anthrax moved from the local, non-enforceable rules that were introduced in the 1880s to large-scale, national pieces of legislation that characterized subsequent decades. Ian Mortimer and Joseph Melling have recently argued that the ‘politicization of the disease’ best explains the ‘chronology of regulation’ in the case of anthrax.