National Archives files reveal touching pleas and ruses against conscription

First world war Middlesex military tribunal letters range from heart-breaking appeals to rants about rotten neighbours

The stories of the “rotten shirker” butcher of Finchley, of the German baker whose shop was destroyed by crowds shouting anti-German abuse, and of the last son at home whose four brothers had already died in the first world war, are revealed in records released online by the National Archives at Kew.

Many of the files, which come from a tribunal that judged thousands of appeals against conscription, have supporting letters, typed or handwritten on shoddy wartime paper. Often the letters have heart-breaking pleas from relatives fearing they will be left destitute, or explanations from employers of how their businesses might be destroyed.

Some of the letters are more startling, however. There is the anonymous denunciation of the Finchley butcher, Charles Rubens Bushey, which says: “He made a heap of money in this shop, he is a proper rotter of a man.”

The case of Harry Ward, a 20-year-old conscientious objector who strikingly described himself as “foreign correspondent and bookkeeping clerk”, led to questions in parliament over claims of the tribunal chairman telling him that as a socialist it was impossible he was a man of conscience. Ward lost the appeal but survived the war.

The records of the 11,307 cases heard by the Middlesex Military Service Appeal Tribunal, cover the period between 1916, when conscription was introduced, and the end of the war in 1918, and are rare survivors.

Once conscription was introduced, first for single and then for married men because volunteer numbers collapsed when it was clear the war would certainly not be over by Christmas, tribunals sat across the country with local ones hearing initial claims and appeals sent to county tribunals.

At the end of the war the government ordered all the tribunal records to be destroyed on grounds they were too sensitive, with only the complete Middlesex records and another set from Scotland preserved as representative samples.

“Although the existence of these records was known, they have been very difficult to access and search, and extremely confusingly indexed,” said Chris Barnes, a records specialist. “They now represent a treasury of hugely valuable material fascinating to social or family historians, searchable by name, place, or reason for appeal.”

As some of the letters demonstrate vividly, much of the material is indeed sensitive, revealing bitter social divisions, families and neighbours feuding, and medical evidence thrown out.

One man had his doctor’s testimony, affirming he a deformed ankle, thrown out, only to be dismissed as unfit from the army two years later, over the same ankle.

Ruses struck up to avoid conscription, and what would have looked by 1916 like certain death, are evident.

Another butcher claimed his business was the only remaining shop in his area; so it was, but as the tribunal discovered, only because he had bought out the competition to try to improve his appeal.

Even the specialists at the archives occasionally came across something which really startled them.

The wife of one Percival Brown, of West Green, wrote …read more