Back | Home
redline
MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | WIDER CONTEXT |
CHARLES EDWARD BALL 1875 -  

support

Charles Edward Ball was an artist, theosophist, vegetarian and humanist who held that "all men have spiritually and psychically the same origin" so that war and conflict "wrong not only ourselves but all of humanity". He faced conscription in June 1916, and was called before the Twickenham Tribunal on the 30th. He was granted Exemption from Combatant Service Only, despite his position that he would "honestly and as a matter of conscience object to all military service, or service under military authorities". Like many COs who shared this position and were granted only ECS by their Tribunal, Charles appealed, taking care to draw the Middlesex Appeal Tribunal's attention to the tenets and beliefs of his Theosophist faith. The Middlesex County Appeal Tribunal decided that Charles was to do Work of National Importance (WNI) through market gardening or other agricultural work. WNI meant taking on an occupation - for COs usually market gardening - that was economically important for the war effort. It also meant operating under the "principle of equal sacrifice" a loose term that stressed the virtue of subjecting COs to the same kinds of pressures and hardships of a soldier at the front. With lethal danger unusual in a market gardening setting, this usually meant hard work for virtually non-existant pay at a great distance from home and family. Charles was ordered to find work no less than 100 miles from his home, leaving behind his wife. He worked in Newton Abbott and Paignton from July 1916 to October 1917 when, nearing the age of 42, he was finally allowed to go back to his home, for the sole reason that he would soon become too old to conscript. While Work of National Importance sometimes seems like an "easy way out" for a CO, or a "correct" alternative to military service, in reality it was often pointless and purely punitive. After months of applications and appeals, Charles was shuttled from farm to farm doing unfamiliar work he was frequently too ill to complete. What good had been served by forcing him to complete a few months of farming work over the winter of 1916, except to assure the Twickenham Tribunal that another CO hadn't "got away with it"?

 

 

  Do you have more information or a photos of CHARLES EDWARD BALL? Let us know
 

redline
CO DATA

Born: 1875
Died:
Address: 143 London Road, Twickenham, London
Tribunal: Twickenham
Prison:
HO Scheme:
CO Work: WNI [1]
Occupation: Artist

Motivation: mixed
[2]
ALTERNATIVIST

 






EditRegion7   EditRegion6
     
red line
address