Probably. Statistically it was on the way out anyway. Along with several other diseases which have since gone without vaccines, such as typhoid and scarlet fever:
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Also, in Germany where meticulous records were kept in the second half of the 19th century, smallpox deaths only diminished after vaccinations were stopped, after it was realised that deaths had increased enormously after vaccination had commenced - and after it was proved that vaccinated people were the index cases.
And in answer to your interesting sanitation index idea, "Scarlet fever still remains a threat today, particularly in developing countries, but nowhere today is it as severe a disease as it was during that frightening time in the middle of the nineteenth century."
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2011/07/06/scarlet-fever-in-hong-kong/
p.s. that is not an anti-vax site, but a conventional medicine one
I only started the Jenner debate after I thought I'd go to the root of the issue. Seriously, the guy was cuckoo, in surprising ways .... you wouldn't believe me if I told you. Basically his whole reputation, his ability to bulldoze through his smallpox-of-the-cow doctrine, was based upon - a cuckoo.
