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THE MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | WIDER CONTEXT | INDEX
HAROLD HOAD 1886 - 1918  

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Harold Hoad was one of many Conscientious Objectors recorded as having “died after arrest but not in prison” during the First World War. Despite dying at home, the blame for his death can be firmly placed at the feet of the government that denied him his legal and moral right to conscientiously object to warfare.

By mid 1918, the Government was cracking slightly under the relentless pressure of CO supporters both within and outside of parliament to release COs held in prison since 1916. Many of these men had been suffering the harsh privations, neglect and punishments of prison life for two years, and more were growing steadily more ill as the year progressed. It was decided to release men who had served long prison sentences and were in a poor state of health gradually. Many would die regardless of this small compromise in the normally strict and draconian policies of the central government. Harry Hoad was one of these men.

His release from prison due to ill health was recorded in the newspaper of the No-Conscription Fellowship, the Tribunal, on the 25th of July 1918. Two months later, he had died at home while in the care of his wife, the Tuberculosis he had contracted while in prison and the terrible conditions and negligent medical care of the work camps proving too much for some scant weeks of recuperation to bear. He had been released in a near terminal condition and the Tribunal again covered his story:

“The day was stormy but the graveyard was bathed in sunshine as we came out of the little gray church of Chart Sutton and followed the body of our comrade to its last resting pace. Round the quiet churchyard crowded the Kentish orchards, whilst through the boughs we caught glimpses of the wide peaceful valley which stretched to the south. As we stood round the open grave, a sense of peace flooded in upon me, and I caught a glimpse of that harmony which Harold Hoad had longed to see established on the earth.

Harold Hoad was arrested in July 1916 and with short intervals for courtsmartial, was in prison from then until March 1918. His first sentence of 112 days was served in Wormwood Scrubs and here his chest first began to trouble him, although he had been in good health when arrested. The rest of his imprisonment was spent in Maidstone Gaol, where tuberculosis rapidly developed and he endured great suffering.

It is incredible that such a man should not have been released immediately on health grounds and indeed the record of his case is a terrible indictment of the medical treatment in the prison. Nothing whatsoever seems to have been done for him, although he had been spitting blood for some time and was so weak when he returned to his unit at Chatham last March that the barracks doctor put him in Fort Pitt Military Hospital. Here he remained until June 8th when he was discharged with the stipulation that his wife must fetch him as he was too ill to travel alone. Expert medical advice was obtained, but it was too late and after three months of intense suffering he died on September 7th at the age of 32. One cannot but feel that his life was thrown away by the wilful neglect and apathy of the authorities.

Harold Hoad was an ardent vegetarian and humanitarian and the inhumanity he saw in prison burnt into his soul. He found the lack of tenderness around him incredible and appalling, and it impressed him all the more with the need for the believer in brotherhood to make his voice heard. “I would like her to get some ideas on justice and to get a broadened outlook” he wrote of his little daughter, “children, nay, all of us have been growing up cramped and befogged. It is the cause of half the present trouble - lack of vision, narrow nationalism.”

And this is the man, tender and loving, who has given his life for the cause.”

Harold’s name along with 68 other COs who died as a result of their treatment in prisons and work camps around the country, is engraved on the CO memorial plaque - a testament to their struggle against militarism and a reminder, as inscribed above the collected names, that it is only “by the faith of the idealist that the ideal comes true”.

 

 

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CO DATA

Born: 1886
Died: 7/9/1918
Address: Chart Sutton, Kent
Tribunal: Hollingbourne
Prison: Wormwood Scrubs, Maidstone
HO Scheme: [1]
CO Work:
Occupation: Stonemason

Absolutist
NCF:
Yes
 


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