EDWIN ALBERT ARNOLD

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Edwin Albert ARNOLD

Edwin was a printer’s brass engraver who lived at 12 Thirlmere Road in Muswell Hill.  The only child of Rachel, a widow by 1916, he was born in 1886 and died in 1950 aged 64.

He applied for Conscientious Objector status on religious grounds;  he was probably a Quaker, being a member of the Muswell Hill Brotherhood Committee and the Muswell Hill Men’s Adult School Movement.

Wood Green Tribunal gave Edwin exemption from combatant service, but said he had to join the Non-Combatant Corps.   He appealed against this on the grounds that “non-combatant status makes me a participant in the destruction of humanity” and asked for work with the YMCA abroad.  This was denied him and he was forcibly enrolled into the 16^th Royal Fusiliers but was then transferred into the NCC at Shoreham, then Aldershot.

Edwin refused to stay and went absent without leave, but was arrested in Muswell Hill on 10^th May 1916 as an absentee.   From there he was handed over to the military and court-martialled in July.  He received 56 days Hard Labour, which he served in Winchester Prison.

Edwin continued to appeal for CO status and was heard by the Central Tribunal that August – they gave him Class A CO status and he was then placed by the Brace Committee in Work Centres:  Wakefield, Warwick and Dartmoor between January 1917 and October 1918

Pearce/IWM                            National Archives/MH47

 

Waldemar J. ALEXANDER

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Waldemar J. ALEXANDER

(of German heritage)

The second child of Cora and Edward Alexander of ‘Westbury’ 16 Hornsey Lane, Waldemar was 8 years older than his CO brother Victor (qv), born in 1879 and 37 in 1916.   Like his father he was a ship owner and also a ship broker’s clerk.

A Quaker attender at the Holloway Meeting, Waldemar appeared before Hornsey Tribunal on 18^th March 1916 and claimed absolute exemption from military service.   The grounds for his exemption application were religious; according to the local paper, the Hornsey Journal, he stated at his hearing “War is organised murder and against the will of God.”

He was one of three CO applicants who were granted an absolute exemption that day by the Tribunal.

This was highly unusual – Hornsey, like most local tribunals, rarely gave absolute exemption to conscientious objectors.

Victor William ALEXANDER (1887-?)

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Victor William ALEXANDER

(of German heritage)

 Victor was born on 6 April 1887 and was almost 29 when the Military Service Act 1916 came in.

He was the 5^th of 7 children of Edward and Cora Alexander of Westbury, 16 Hornsey Lane. His father Edward was a ship-owner and ship-broker; his mother Cora was German, from Bremen.

A well-educated young man – Victor was an Oxford graduate – he became a teacher and in 1916  was an assistant schoolmaster at Bootham School, York.  Bootham is a Quaker School founded in the 18^th century.

Although Victor’s records give Hornsey Lane as his address, his first appearance at a Tribunal was in York on 23 March 1916, where he was granted exemption from combatant service conditional upon his joining the Friends’ Ambulance Unit (FAU)

He worked for the FAU in France and on the hospital ship Glenart Castle, being recommended for an FAU General Inspector post in May 1916.  Victor remained with the Friends’ Ambulance Unit until January 1919.

His brother Waldemar was also a CO (see his biography)