Letters of a conscientious objector
Kate Macdonald writes about a fascinating correspondence
On 4 November 1916 Frank Sunderland – a pacifist from Letchworth in Hertfordshire, north of London – was formally arrested for refusing to take up military service under the Military Service Act 1916. He was court-martialled as an absentee, classed as an ‘absolutist’ conscientious objector and on 15 November sentenced to six months’ hard labour at Wormwood Scrubs. He was given two extensions to his sentence and was released shortly after 14 April 1919.
Frank’s wife Lucy remained living in Letchworth with their three children: Dora was aged nine, Chrissie was seven and Morris was five. Lucy took over Frank’s job of collecting insurance premiums and earned extra money by sewing and tailoring. The Letchworth Quaker community supported them stoutly, in contrast to the attitudes of their families in London, who thought Frank’s stance was unpatriotic.
Frank and Lucy wrote to each other as often as the law permitted, and their letters are rare surviving evidence of working-class wartime experience. As well as testifying to their love and loyalty to each other, the letters show how their shared beliefs upheld the couple through two and a half years of separation, thinking through how a better future in a more equal society could be achieved for all:
I try not to mind very much, but it seems so cruel to take a man away from his wife and children when they need him so much. Either to soldier and death, or to prison and the knowledge of right, both are bad for the wife, only the latter is going to leave the world a little better than we found it and so makes it worthwhile to stick to our Idealism.
After Lucy’s death in 1961 the wartime letters went first to Morris and then to Dora. They were hard to read, closely written, and were on poor quality paper. Dora’s daughter Julia Prescott, her son-in-law Tom Heydeman and her granddaughter Lucy Heydeman typed and collated the letters over several years with the intention of eventual publication.
I became friends with Tom and Elizabeth Heydeman through our Quaker connections, and stayed with them when I was working at the University of Reading. As I had published some research on first world war history, they asked me if I would like to read Frank and Lucy’s letters. Naturally, I was delighted to do so: to work on unstudied letters from a historically significant period is a rare opportunity.
I saw immediately that they would make a fascinating book, and wrote to several publishers with a proposal. Their revision requirements did not give Frank and Lucy’s letters the prominence they deserved, as a continuous, cumulative narrative. The power of the letters is in the richness of their social and historical detail, and the texture of ordinary life that is so often missing from histories of the war.
By 2017 I had returned to my earlier, pre-academic profession of publishing, and had set up Handheld Press. Bringing Frank and Lucy’s letters out as a book was high on my list of projects, and I was warmly encouraged by the family.
The complete collection of letters ran to about 200,000 words, which had to be reduced by half to make a manageable book. I edited them by focusing on Lucy’s story. She had an income to earn, a house to run, three children to feed and clothe and keep happy and healthy, and an imprisoned husband to encourage, on top of increasing wartime pressures.
Hope you can have the few goodies I have sent. Try and take the eggs in milk or even in tea if such a thing is allowed. My morning tea nearly chokes me because you are not sharing it (tho’ sometimes you have refused it). I hope you will write to me every day as long as you can. I feel your spirit always with me. It helps me throughout the loneliness of the night. I haven’t time to feel lonely during the day.
While Lucy was no doubt thankful that she and the children weren’t under bombardment, and that Frank’s life was not immediately at risk, the grind of her never-ending workload began to wear her down.
I got home at 8.30 dead beat. The children had been having a lovely time and were still playing happily in the garden. I got them to bed as soon as I could and after a little rest and a cup of coffee went myself. Now I have a busy day with bookings up. O dear I feel a little tired of it, no peace.
Reading and editing the letters in chronological order revealed the gradual deterioration of the family’s health, for example. This was an alarming unfolding narrative, knowing that the ‘Spanish flu’ pandemic of 1918-20, only months away, would kill those whose immune systems had been weakened by war.
Chrissie is not better I am sorry to say. She has 3 places on her forehead now; her hand and leg is better. I am bathing her with hot water and boracic powder, but I shall take her to the Doctor this evening or the morning. Morris has his cough again. I am sure now it is caused through the enlarged tonsils. I expect they will have to be done soon. I shall try and get my teeth seen to too.
But Lucy wasn’t wholly on her own: she had a strong network of women friends and neighbours, many of whom were Quakers, who gave her the support she needed. Lucy was also well able to stand up for herself – her routing of her neighbours over the mystery of the stinking shared sewer conveys the strength of her personality.
The smell was so awful again in the evening I went up to Mr Palmer yesterday morning and we called on Donelly the Sanitary Inspector. I was not going to let a thing like that go on while [the neighbours] quibbled about the cost.
Lucy’s letters are full of her expanding interests: attending Adult School lectures, arguing with people who objected to Frank’s position, and commenting on the politics of the day, which she followed closely.
The women’s Labour Party are now holding meetings once a week at Common View, with the idea of the coming election to do with the changing of Rural to Urban, and local matters [that] should be of interest to women, if parliamentary [ones] do not. I heard of such a lot who did not vote at the Election because they did not understand and did not know their husband’s views and would not go against them. I believe even the majority of men do not understand politics.
I needed to research nearly 200 footnotes. As well as the cooperative movement, the garden cities movement, and the No Conscription Fellowship (NCF) I learned a great deal about the Home Office scheme for alternative service for COs, the Esperanto movement, the Temperance movement, a host of Independent Labour Party (ILP) politicians, the wartime cabinet members who disagreed with Lloyd George, the Women’s Freedom League, Theosophy, the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), vegetarian cooking in wartime, the Labour Leader, the Alpha Union, Letchworth’s welcoming attitude to wartime refugees, the general election of 1918 and the by-elections in 1919, and the remarkable numbers of men and women in political partnerships.
Lucy even read the Friend. Her story is a unique survival of how Quaker values were lived in wartime.
The Conscientious Objector’s Wife, edited by Kate Macdonad, is published by Handheld Press at £19.99.
Comments
Frank Sunderland was given exemption from combatant service. This meant that he would have to report to the local Army barracks as a soldier, albeit to the Non-Combatant Corps, an army unit created for carrying supplies, building roads and similar non-fighting tasks. For Frank, however, this was totally unacceptable. In other words, it was his choice to be imprisoned, with very serious consequences for himself and his family.
By frankem51 on 28th June 2018 - 9:26
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