Hi Rowland. I hope you and others may find this reply of interest. thanks again Rowland, Clive
Thank you for your interesting enquiry about your grandfather, Albert Edward Davenport, as a WW1 conscientious objector.
He is, indeed, commemorated in the Roll of Honour of the Birmingham Branch of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR), a copy of which we hold here, and is at present my only source for specific information on him. The Roll of Honour, a slim booklet listing very briefly Birmingham FoR COs, is undated, but internal evidence indicates a date of late 1917. It is good to know that there is also a copy in the Birmingham Reference Library, as local records on COs are often hard to come by.
The major problem is that in 1921 all the official tribunal records of WW1 COs were ordered to be destroyed, as redundant and taking up space, except for the Middlesex records, kept as a an example of the way the system worked. There was little thought of people researching individual COs.
Nevertheless, it is possible to reconstruct from the FoR mention of your grandfather being in Princetown Work Centre a general scenario. He would have appeared before the Birmingham Local Military Service Tribunal, and it may be presumed that he was either rejected outright, or offered only a place in the Non-Combatant Corps (NCC), a corps in the Army created especially for COs, whereby there was a commitment that the members would not be required to use or handle weapons; that option was acceptable to few COs, who saw the NCC as part of the 'war machine', even without weapons. He would have had a right of appeal to an Appeal Tribunal, but we may presume that that made no effective change; recognition of COs was very sparingly given.
The next step is that as a man now deemed in law to be on the Army reserve, he would have been sent a notice to report to an Army depot, which notice he would doubtless have ignored - he knew that he was a CO, and it was the state's problem if it refused to recognise him. He might have been sent one or two more similar notices, which he would also have ignored, so eventually a police constable would have come to his door to arrest him as an absentee from the Army. As a devout Baptist, he would have 'gone quietly', and when brought before the local Magistrates' Court he would have acknowledged who he was and ignoring the notices, but argued his conscientious objection. The magistrates would have said that all that had been dealt with by the Tribunals, and would have fined him, probably 40s, and handed him over to a waiting military escort. The military would have taken him to wherever he was supposed to have reported in the first place, and at some point he would have been given a formal order, such as to put on a uniform. He would have, doubtless very politely, refused, and after one or more formal warnings as to the consequences, he would have been charged under military law with refusing to obey an order, and, in due course brought before a court-martial. His plea, again of conscientious objection, would have been ignored, and he would have been sentenced, quite possibly to 112 days hard labour, the usual first sentence, although some first sentences were shorter or longer.
Although awarded by court-martial for an offence for which a civilian could not be punished in this way, such a sentence was served in a ordinary civilian prison. Your grandfather could have been sent to Winson Green, the local Birmingham prison, but not necessarily so, particularly if his allocated depot was some distance from Birmingham. As civil prisons began to fill up with COs held in this way, the government had to re-think its strategy for dealing with COs, with the knowledge that the intransigence of Tribunals over recognising COs was a major part of the problem. A system called the Home Office Scheme was devised, whereby work centres and work camps were set up in various parts of the country, in which COs could be housed in less rigorous conditions than prison, but be required to work. An overarching Central Tribunal was commissioned to reconsider the case of each imprisoned CO, and to invite them for interview, with a view to admission to the Scheme.
The interviews were held in Wormwood Scrubs Prison, to which COs were transferred for the purpose. It is very likely that your grandfather was transferred there from whatever prison he had originally been held in, as we know he was admitted to the Scheme. Among the places designated as Home Office work centres were four prisons: Wakefield, Warwick, Knutsford and Dartmoor. The conversion to work centres comprised mainly the removal locks from the doors of cells, which became 'rooms', the wearing of ordinary clothes rather than prison uniforms and permission to go out of the centre in the evenings and on Sundays. Dartmoor, which had already closed as a prison (it was deemed too old a building) was not re-opened as a work centre until March 1917, so it is likely that your grandfather was in some other work centre prior to Princetown.
Most COs were given final discharge from work centres in April 1919, so it is reasonable to assume that that was the date of your grandfather's release. As to earlier timing, it partly depends on your grandfather's age, and whether he had already married by August 1915. (Conscription legislation could be tortuously complicated). The Central Tribunal's sittings at Wormwood Scrubs for the HO Scheme began in August 1916.
That is probably enough for an initial response. If you could give me your grandfather's date of birth and his date of marriage, I could suggest a time slot for a trawl of the Birmingham press for reports of his tribunals and Magistrates' Court hearings.
Partly to fill the gap left by by destruction of the Tribunal records, and to deal with enquiries such as yours, we are building a database of every British CO of whom we have any trace (3900 WW1 COs so far). Your grandfather was initially entered in 2005 (waiting for you!) from the details in the FoR Roll of Honour, to which I have now added the name, address and denominational details you have supplied. For the record, his date of death and his normal occupation would be helpful.
We have published a booklet, Refusing to Kill, about WW1 COs, for which I attach a flyer.
I look forward to hearing from you further.
Best wishes
