By 1894, some five years after leading Victorian scientists had called upon the state to support the creation of a ‘Pasteur Institute in Britain’, the building of the British Institute of Preventive Medicine on the Chelsea Embankment was nearing completion. This year, however, was not to be characterized by celebrations of British achievements in bacteriology, so long the preserve of French and German science, but by fierce public opposition, both to the Institute and the location of its laboratories. One particularly public protest took place on 28 April 1894, when protestors – drawn largely from anti-vivisection and labour groups – conducted a parade and mass meeting in Pimlico, which passed by the site of the British Institute laboratories on the way to its rallying point on the Old Pimlico Pier. The handbill for this event very specifically set out its grounds for opposition: ‘to protest against the Erection of the proposed Institute of Preventive Medicine (so called) on the CHELSEA EMBANKMENT (Near Chelsea Bridge)’. Clearly, the geographical placement of the laboratory was one key aspect of public opposition, with ‘public’ in this instance consisting of a miscellany of anti-vivisectionists, suffragists, radical club activists, working-class and friendly societies members, and local residents. The other key areas of opposition to the British Institute were its desire to undertake vivisection, and the concern that the diseases studied at the Institute would be ‘disseminat[ed] … by the germs flying about in the air’ throughout Chelsea.