From the archive: Prisoners
Janet Scott continues her series on the Friend and the first world war and tells of the life endured by prisoners of conscience
In its 8 June edition the Friend reported that Yearly Meeting 1917 had sent a message ‘To Our Friends Imprisoned for Conscience Sake’. It read:
We thank God for the faithful witness you are bearing to the truth, and to Christ’s Gospel of love. We rejoice that strength has been given to you to bear all hardship cheerfully and bravely. We stand by you, and long that you may know how closely we associate ourselves with you. We know that the sacrifice you are making will not be in vain, but will be richly rewarded both in your own souls and in the service and help of mankind. Such was the price paid by our forefathers, in their more bitter day, in their great struggle for religious liberty. We rejoice to know that many of you have been able, like William Tewksbury, to enter ‘prisons as palaces, and to esteem their bolts and locks as jewels,’ and that you have been upheld by the presence of One whom no bars can keep out.
The message continued:
We look forward to the time when, prepared and tested by all that you now experience, you will step into freedom to take your part in a very special way in bringing the spirit of Christ into all our service for the future, with its new hopes and new responsibilities. Your faces are set towards a glorious day of love and liberty in the light of God. Whether it come sooner or later depends in some measure on us all. We pray that in the outward desert of prison life your souls may be continually refreshed by the upbringing of the living water in the presence of the Christ of God.
The Yearly Meeting also agreed a minute reaffirming continued opposition to conscription, calling for the repeal of the acts pertaining to military service, and urging complete liberty of speech, action and the press, and entire freedom of conscience.
Letters and reports
The Friend regularly published letters and reports from prisoners. Many mentioned how much Meetings for Worship were appreciated. A report of a Meeting in Wormwood Scrubs was published on 11 May:
A walk of two hundred yards brings us to the Lecture Hall, a big, low ceilinged room, hung with maps and pictures, furnished with backless forms, and with a raised platform at the far end. In this room are already gathered a number of comrades sitting in silence. The chaplains enter and the meeting begins. “Who has a hymn ready,” says our leader. Without accompaniment we sang one of the hymns from the “Fellowship Book”. Then a time of silent prayer and afterwards messages from one another, prisoner or chaplain, bond or free, words of hope and cheer, testimonies to the living Presence in the silence of the cell, visions of future work, and a sense of consecration greater than in the past. Wonderful messages, many of them, from deep down in hearts which have known trouble, – and the relief from trouble, and who have felt anew the desire and duty of spreading the message and Gospel of goodwill throughout the world.
But the officer in charge is fidgeting with his watch, and the half-hour is nearly up. “Just time for two verses,” says the chaplain, and after them a few words of benediction. Then we march back to our Halls, to our work, to prison. The brightest hour in the fortnight is over, and we are already looking forward to our next Quakers’ meeting.
Prisoners tried to sound cheerful. In a letter from Wormwood Scrubs, which appeared in the Friend on 18 May, Maurice Rowntree wrote:
It would not be true to say that one has not had one’s downs as well as ups, but there has always been the overshadowing mercy close at hand… The food here is all right, and just enough for me: as to work, for the first month’s solitary in cells it was all canvas (i.e., mail bags, patches, &c.): then I got outside about twice a week on a job shovelling coke – fine exercise. Now I am transferred to the basket shop, making waste-paper baskets for the Government: quite interesting work…
We hardly see anything of the other prisoners. The lack of news and of opportunity for self-expression are what one feels chiefly, though we get a brief summary of the week’s news on the occasion of the week-day chapel. A fair number of the men here are known to me.
Remember, that if we are doing the right thing, the Eternal Arms are ever around us!
Wilfred Littleboy was detained in Doncaster prison. His words appeared in the Friend’s 13 July edition:
During my first month I was entirely in my cell. During that time I worked my poetry hard and also did a little memorising…
With the start of the second stage I gravitated again to the laundry on washing two or three days a week; for the rest of my working time I jog placidly along the seams of mail bags, with a little floor cleaning thrown in by way of variety…
During the time of the Yearly Meeting – the meetings were constantly in my thoughts, I do not think I have missed being present in spirit at a single sitting, and on the evening of the closing sitting, even before I had set myself specially to think of it, a most deep and profound sense of peace laid hold of me, and so I felt sure that the ‘Truth had reigned’. I cannot be sufficiently thankful that this wonderful opportunity for quiet thought and communion has been granted to me.
The cost of conscience
But repeated spells of imprisonment began to take their toll on both physical and mental health. On 13 July the Friend reported the death of a conscientious objector:
Alfred Eungblut, a young pianoforte tuner, was court-martialled in September 1916 and sentenced to two years hard labour. In December 1916 it was reported that he was in Epsom Lunatic Asylum, where he died early in June 1917.
On 10 August the Friend reported the suicide in July of a conscientious objector, Alexander N Campbell of Glasgow:
He was arrested on October 13th, 1916, served his first sentence in Wormwood Scrubs, and his second in prisons at Ayr and Glasgow. After his third D.C.M. [district court martial], he seemed to be in a state of nervous collapse, in which condition he consented to become a soldier. Two days afterwards he committed suicide, and those who knew him best say there is no doubt that this was due to his remorse at having yielded to the system which he had been refusing to recognise all these months. Quaker chaplains formed a high opinion of him, describing him as a bright and intelligent and sincere young man.
Parliamentary debate
In July there was a discussion in parliament which the Friend reported on 20 July:
Mr. Whitehouse called attention to the treatment of conscientious objectors who were in prison. People like Stephen Hobhouse and Clifford Allen, with a public record of the highest character, were being subjected to treatment which was meted out to the lowest and most hardened criminals.
Lord H. Cavendish-Bentinck said he was not at all easy in his mind about the treatment of conscientious objectors. By their sincerity and courage they had lured the Government into a rather false position. He hoped that the treatment would be altered in future.
Captain Stephen Gwynn said that the Government ought to look carefully into the case of these men to take care that they did not create a sense of injustice and the impression that the existence of a great army meant what was called militarism.
Sir George Cave said the objectors referred to were men… who would not fight, and because of them soldiers had to be sent three or four times to the trenches to save the lives of these very men and the lives of their wives and children… These men had committed a crime against the law of their country…
A death notice
On 13 July the Friend carried a notice that showed the cost of war for one family:
Quaife – June 15th. Killed while stretcher-bearing in France, Robert Quaife, second son of Thomas and Jane Quaife of Folkstone, aged 32 years; also Henry Quaife, youngest son of Thomas and Jane Quaife, while stretcher-bearing on June 14th, aged 24 years.
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