The rules and regulations that governed the lives of Conscientious Objectors sometimes resulted in complicated and even convoluted experiences. Horace Mumford was a Conscientious Objector who went through two very different processes that were usually quite separate.

Having applied to the Morden Tribunal as a Conscientious Objector in early 1916, and from there to the Surrey County Tribunal, Horace was granted Exemption from Combatant Service (ECS) provided that he took up Work of National Importance (WNI), which he did under the oversight of the Pelham Committee in July 1916. Like many COs undertaking WNI Horace faced a great deal of hostility and, after five months, Horace found it impossible to find work and was referred back to the Tribunal. Removing his WNI exemption, the Tribunal simply passed him ECS, making him eligible for near-immediate call up to the army. Refusing to report to barracks, Horace was arrested in January 1917 and transferred to the control of the military at the Kingston Barracks where, refusing all orders, he was faced with a court martial on the 3rd of February and sentenced to prison. After a short time in Wormwood Scrubs and a Central Tribunal hearing, Horace took up the Home Office Scheme, allowing him to leave prison in return for accepting work on a designated Home Office Camp. From March 1917 until the end of the war, he worked in a variety of Camps including Dartmoor and Knutsford until eventual release in 1919. Unusually, Horace had both taken up WNI and, later, become an Absolutist CO. It could be that the hostility and poor treatment he received while farming under the Pelham Committee that affirmed his position and determination to refuse war, so that once he had been driven from useful and productive work he resolved to no longer support the war effort, even with his labour.