ALBERT NORMAN BURRELL

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ALBERT NORMAN BURRELL 

Albert was born in May 1893 and died, aged 94, in 1986 in Chichester.   In 1916 he was a clerk at London Omnibus Co. Ltd. and lived with his parents at 98 Beresford Road, Harringay, in Hornsey.

He probably came from a comfortably-off family, his father describing himself in 1911 as a ‘retired gentleman – independent’ and the family lived in a 6 roomed house.

Albert appears to have been an absolutist, although we have no records of what happened to him after his case had been rejected by Middlesex Tribunal. His original application for absolute exemption was to Tottenham Tribunal on 13^th March 1916.  Not only did he apply under Clause f. (CO) but also under d. (Hardship) and e. (Illness – Albert was not robust had poor eyesight, neuralgia and was deaf in one ear.   He told the Tribunal that ‘Love and goodwill towards all men is much higher and nobler than hatred and crime’ and that he considered it ‘deeply immoral to injure and kill men’ and that he would refuse to take the military oath or come under military command whatever the consequences. Tottenham gave him exemption from combatant service only.

He appealed to Middlesex Tribunal saying that Tottenham could not have realised the depths of his belief

• They did not read out his statement either to the Tribunal or the Public
• There was no fair discussion and the hearing only lasted 4-5 minutes.
• He had been refused the right to call witnesses.

Middlesex not only refused his appeal, but also withdrew the exemption from combatant service certificate.

Nothing more is known.

National Archives/MH47

ERNEST HENRY GEORGE BUGDEN

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ERNEST HENRY GEORGE BUGDEN

Ernest was born in 1891 and was a traveller and salesman in 1916.  He lived at 121 Archway Road, Highgate, in Hornsey, having previously lived with two siblings and his mother Harriet, a Mission Hall Caretaker, at 45 Cromwell Road, Highgate.

He married Hester Blackburn in the first quarter of 1916.

On 4^th March 1916 Ernest’s application for full exemption from military service to Hornsey Tribunal was heard but turned down on the grounds that his conscientious objection could not be deeply held because he had applied for a commission in the Army at the start of the war.

Ernest then appealed to Middlesex Tribunal on 28^th March on the grounds that his having considered serving did not make his current claim any the less valid.   Though he does not state adherence to any particular church or group, his application was on religious grounds, mentioning ‘Brethren’ and giving biblical quotations, stating that he believed ‘ it to be contrary to the word of God to take any part in material warfare or political matters’.

Ernest’s appeal was turned down and we do not know what happened to him then.

National Archives/MH47

VICTOR JOHN BROWN

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VICTOR JOHN BROWN

Victor, of 6 Palace Road, Crouch End, Hornsey, was a Clerk in the Inland Revenue in 1916.  He was 22 when he applied on conscientious grounds for an exemption from military service to Hornsey Tribunal in February 1916.  In his application he stressed his belief in the sacredness of human life, although he did not subscribe to any particular religious creed.  His belief was in the universal Brotherhood of Man.

His case was heard by the Hornsey Tribunal on 28 March 1916, but was dismissed.  Victor appealed to Middlesex Appeal Tribunal in April, but was again refused.

Victor appears to have been drafted into the 9/2^nd West Surrey Regiment and was court martialled at Shoreham on 26^th June 1916 (presumably for disobeying orders).  The Court Martial sentenced him to 2 years Hard Labour (later commuted to 20 months) which he served in Wormwood Scrubss.

In July 1916 the Central Tribunal heard his case in Wormwood Scrubs, found him CO Class A and referred him to the Brace Committee, who put him on the Home Office Scheme – in Wakefield, Denton and Newhaven.   The Pearce Register has an account of him on a road-mending scheme in Clare, W. Suffolk in August 1916  On 15^th September 1916 he was arrested for absenteeism.  We do not know where and how he spent the next 10 months – maybe he was returned to the Home Office Scheme, but at some point rejected and was rejected by the Home Office Scheme.

He was again court martialled in Sittingbourne on 28^th June 1917.  His resulting 2 year sentence with Hard Labour was served in Maidstone Civilian Prison between July 1917 and February 1918 (his sentence was commuted to 15 months, but he seems to have served 17 months!)

Pearce/IWM            National Archives/MH47

WALTER S. BRADLEY

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WALTER S. BRADLEY

Walter was born in Stroud Green in 1884.   In 1916 in he lived at 94 Seymour Road on Harringay Ladder in Hornsey and was a Shop Manager for an artists’ colourman’s business.   His wife was Bessie but it is not known if they had any children.

Although he lived in Hornsey the Pearce Register records that his appeal against the decision of a Local Tribunal not to grant him an exemption from military service as a conscientious objector was considerd by the London County Appeal Tribunal, and not the Middlesex Appeal Tribunal. This would suggest that he did not appear before the Hornsey Military Service Tribunal, but at a local tribunal in one of the metropolitan Boroughs of London, probably where he worked.

It is likely that the Appeal Tribunal gave him exemption from combatant service because he was allocated work by the Pelham Committee as a farm labourer at Ampthill in Buckinghamshire, where he remained from 31.7.16 to 11.10.17.

We know nothing further of Walter at the moment!

FREDERICK GEORGE BOWEN

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FREDERICK GEORGE BOWEN

Frederick died at 57 in 1931 and is buried with his wife Sarah Susan in Highgate Cemetery.

He was a member of the International Bible Students’ Association (which later became the Jehovah’s Witnesses) and this was his motivation for applying for Conscientious Objector status.

Born in 1875 he was 41 in 1916, living then at 13 Duckett Road in Hornsey.  He claimed absolute exemption at Hornsey Tribunal on 11^th August 1916, but they only granted exemption from combatant service;   this was confirmed at Middlesex Appeal Tribunal in September, but they made the exemption conditional upon him finding Work of National Importance, at least 50 miles outside London – and work which ‘would involve a sacrifice’.

Frederick was a tram driver by trade and his employers, London Tramways, approached Middlesex Tribunal to ask that he could continue to work for them.  They were 300 tram-drivers short, the work was considered a certified occupation and accepted as work of national importance for Conscientious Objector’s.  But the Tribunal refused their request and insisted that Frederick stuck to the terms they had laid down.

He eventually found work as a farm labourer at Waterloo Farm, Sandy, Beds.  He stayed there until 24^th October 1917 when he moved to Chesterfield Farm in Sandy.   There he was paid 40 shillings a week as opposed to the 32/6d. at the previous farm.  Mr. Odell, the owner of Chesterfield Farm, who called his business ‘market gardening’, also employed Barnard George Preston another conscientious objector.

ALFRED GEORGE BEESTON

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Alfred George BEESTON

(Alfred’s brother, Robert James Beeston, was also a CO – qv)

Alfred was born in 1888 and became an Assistant Warehouseman for a Tailors’ Trimmings Company.He lived at 391 Wightman Road, in Hornsey, with his parents David (b. 1855, a Grocer’s Assistant, and Harriet (b.1854). There were two sons – Alfred and Robert and three daughters: Harriet (b. 1883) Elizabeth (b.1885) and Ethel (b.1892).

His claim for absolute exemption from military service at Hornsey Tribunal on 4^th March 1916, was dismissed.  He had made it on Christian grounds.  His statement reads: “Being a Christian I have nothing to do with this world’s system”  But the Tribunal found “his claim to be absolutely without foundation…had he really held the views he stated he would not have remained in his present employment in connection with Military Officers’ Accoutrements”

When, however, Alfred appealed to Middlesex Tribunal saying “God having expressed his willingness to bless all men, I could not take the life of any person” he was granted exemption from combatant service.

It is not known whether he joined a non-combatant corps or his case had a different outcome.

Alfred died in 1857 at the age of 69.

National Archives/MH47      Pearce/IWM

ROBERT JAMES BEESTON

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Robert James BEESTON. 

(Brother of Alfred George Beeston – qv)

Robert was a good deal younger than his brother Alfred.  He was born in 1897 and so only 19 in 1916.He worked for the Great Northern Railway as a Clerk in the Accounts Department.  He, too, lived with his birth family at 391 Wightman Road, Hornsey.

His motivation for becoming a Conscientious Objector was his Christian belief.  When he put forward these beliefs as he claimed absolute exemption at Hornsey Tribunal on 4^th March 1916 (the same day as his brother’s hearing), the panel responded – rather bizarrely – that “the applicant, had he really possessed conscientious objections, would have given up his berth on the GNR which is largely occupied with the carriage of troops and war material.”

However, Robert’s appeal to the Middlesex Appeal Tribunal was rather more successful and he was granted exemption from combatant service and sent to join the Non-Combatant Corps.  He joined the NCC 3^rd Eastern at Mill Hill Barracks on 16^th May and served until the end of that month in England.  Then he was sent to France, where, presumably he remained.

Robert died in Shepway, Kent in 1985 aged 88.

National Archives/MH47           Pearce/IWM

CARL BECK

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Carl BECK

Carl was a bank clerk, the elder of two sons of a pharmacist, Albert Beck and his wife Elizabeth; the family  lived at 43 Mount Pleasant Villas in Stroud Green, Hornsey. In 1916 he was 26 years old and a Christian with, as he said, an “absolute conviction that war is contrary to the teachings of Christ.”

Accordingly, on 18^th March 1916, he made an application to Hornsey Tribunal claiming absolute exemption from military service.  Hornsey refused his application with the words “Appellant appeared, as in other cases, to be reciting a lesson which he had got off by heart” and claimed that it was not a personal conviction.

Carl appealed to the Middlesex Tribunal who did grant him conditional exemption conditional upon his obtaining work with the YMCA to work with the troops.   We know he was referred to the Pelham Committee for placement, but there the trail ends for now.

National Archives/MH47

CHARLES EDWIN BECKET

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Charles Edwin BECKET

Charles, who lived at 24 Rathcoole Gardens, Hornsey, was a Commercial Clerk by profession, but he was also a Baptist Local Preacher who had taken and passed the Church’s own exams for a lay preacher.

He had married his wife Jane in 1904 when he was 20 and she was 26.  They had two young daughters who would have been 8 and 5 and a half in 1916.

He appears to have applied for, and got, exemption from combatant service in August 1916, but we only pick up his trail with definite evidence from July 1918.  On the 5^th of that month, after the expiry of a previous exemption, he applied to Hornsey Tribunal for absolute exemption, but his application was refused.

On 18^th September he appealed to Middlesex Tribunal and was granted exemption from combatant service.  His appeal had actually been for absolute exemption so that he could become a full-time evangelistic preacher with the Open Air Mission, Bedford Row, in London.

Charles died in Eastbourne in 1962, aged 78.

EDWARD KENT BALLS

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EDWARD KENT BALLS

Edward was born in 1893 and died – in Yorkshire – aged 91 in 1984.  In the war years and previously his family home was at 7 Ashford Avenue, Hornsey.  On the 1911 Census the Head was Harry, Edward’s eldest brother born in 1884.  Harry lived at the Ashford Avenue address with his wife Alice and his two younger brothers (including Edward) and sister.  There are no parents  – we assume they may have been deceased.

In 1911 Edward is recorded as being a Draper’s Apprentice.   He is reccorded on the Pearce Register as a conscientious objector, but we have no records of his ever being before any of the military tribunals in 1916.   When conscription came in in 1916 had already been working with the Friends’ War Victims Relief Service  since August 1915 and remained with them until 1923, being sent to France, Corsica and Russia.

Pearce/IWM