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ROBERT DUNCAN HALCROW 1889 -  

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Robert Duncan Halcrow, from Dundee, was one of many men to be caught up in the Army’s desire to control the punishment of men who refused conscription. Caught up by the Military Service Act 1916, Robert was 27 and working as a commercial traveller when he was conscripted. He decided to apply for exemption from the military as a Conscientious Objector, and appeared before the Dundee Tribunal. While his reason for refusing Conscription is unknown, it is clear that he took up an Absolutist stance, refusing any and all compromise with military authority.

His Tribunal hearing was most likely in mid-March, and could well have been one of the first Conscientious Objector cases brought before the Dundee Tribunal. They granted him Exemption from Combatant Service Only (ECS), a common verdict that hinged on a CO accepting conscription, and being placated by the provision of a non-combatant role in the military. Robert appealed against this sentence to the Forfar Appeal Tribunal, where his case was heard on the 3rd of April 1919, but unfortunately for him the Appeal Tribunal upheld the original verdict and with his ECS confirmed, Robert would legally be expected to report to barracks, regardless of his objection.

Instead, he refused to cooperate and was arrested as an absentee from the Army. Tried at Dundee Sheriff Court on the 17th May, he was fined 40 shillings, and escorted under guard to the Army. This trial had made no dent in Robert’s resolve to resist and he continued his passive non- compliance while in the hands of the military, resulting in a Court Martial for disobeying orders on the 19th. In these early days of Conscientious Objection, the Army were determined to control both the lives and the punishment of resisting COs, and Robert was sentenced to six months imprisonment, which would normally have seen him transferred to a civilian prison. The sentence was commuted instead to 68 days - the longest period he could be held by the military. Direct control, or so the Army believed, was the best way to force COs into the Army. Sending them to civilian prison meant losing control, but keeping Robert in a guard room allowed them to act essentially unsupervised with his punishment. Physical assault, exceptionally rare in prison, was common in barracks guard rooms, and the threat of it would have hung over Robert during his sentence.

It seems to have made little difference to Robert’s conviction that he would not be part of the military machine. In July 1917 he was released from detention at the Barlinnie Military Prison, but swiftly faced another court martial for the same refusal to follow orders - this time leading to an 18 month sentence, but this time in the civilian Barlinnie Prison. There, though conditions would have been much the same as the military prison, with the same mind-numbing isolation, starvation diet and endless cold, Robert could at least know that he was held by a civilian authority, and that his treatment was bound by civil law.

Civil prison also meant that his case would be reviewed by the Central Tribunal to judge his status as acceptable for the Home Office Scheme (HoS). After a month in prison, the Central Tribunal passed him for the HoS, which, when he was transferred to Ballachulish work camp on the 12th of October 1916, would ensure better conditions and nominally useful work, in exchange for a promise of good behaviour. Robert accepted the implicit compromise of the HoS and would later be transferred to the large prison at Wakefield where several hundred COs were held together on the scheme. It is probable that he stayed on the scheme until the end of the war, when in 1919 most HoS COs were steadily released, back to the homes and lives conscription had torn them from.

 

 

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CO DATA

Born: 1889
Died:
Address: 44 Polepark Road, Dundee, Scotland
Tribunal: Dundee
Prison: Barlinnie
HO Scheme:Ballachulish, Wakefield [1]
CO Work:
Occupation: Commercial Traveller

Motivation: Agnostic
[2]
ABSOLUTIST

 


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WIDER CONTEXT | more
ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION
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CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION
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TRIBUNALS | more
SENTENCED TO DEATH | more
PRISONS | more
HOME OFFICE CENTRES | more

READ | more

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