You’re a pacifist — a world war is declared. What now?

By Tom McGrath

It’s 5 January 1917. The First World War has been raging for two-and-a-half years with no end in sight. Casualties among British servicemen are rising daily; just six months earlier, on 1 July 1916, 19,240 British soldiers died on the very first day of the Battle of the Somme. The population back home is becoming war-weary, but 29-year-old Arthur Turtle is feeling the weight of it more than most. 

Arthur’s temporary exemption from military service has come to an end. He can not and does not want to fight. Yet he does not run from his fear. Instead, he walks right into Moston police station and turns himself in. If going to the front line was hell, and staying at home was salvation, then Arthur Turtle is about to face his stay in purgatory.

Before we continue with the story of Arthur Turtle, we first must delve into his past. Luckily for me, his life story — or rather, fragments from a chapter in his life’s story — are kept in a cardboard box in Leigh Town Hall. Arthur’s box is just one of thousands preserved by Archives: Wigan & Leigh — where I have worked for the past two-and-a-half years — which provide a glimpse into the history of people and places connected with the Wigan Borough.

Inside Arthur’s box is a bundle of fragile letters and photographs, carefully organised and catalogued. There’s always a thrill in accessing history in such a tangible way. From these documents, one can piece together the story of an ordinary man who faced an extraordinary battle.

Arthur was born in Tyldesley in September 1888. He was a twin, and one of ten children of William and Annie Turtle. The family were poor but close-knit, and by the age of 12, Arthur and his brother were already working part-time as scavengers in a cotton mill. This was the lowest form of work in the mill. Arthur had to crawl under the moving machinery to gather bits of dust and cotton that had come loose. These early hardships did not deter his passion for life — he would later reflect “Tyldesley is a very ugly place, but I love every stick and stone of it.”

By the time he was in his twenties, he had escaped the mills and found work as the manager of a grocery shop, working in Tyldesley before eventually moving to Moston with his mother and siblings around the time of the outbreak of war in 1914. Arthur and his brothers were now facing decisions like many other young men. Initially, a huge wave of patriotism swept across Europe, with thousands volunteering to fight for their country. However, as the war dragged on and weeks turned to months and then to years, and with daily reports of young lives being cut short on blood-soaked battlefields in Belgium and France, it was only natural that this enthusiasm began to wane. 

Supply could not keep up with demand. In January 1916, the government introduced conscription for single men aged 18-41 under the Military Service Act. In May 1916 this was extended to include married men, and later in 1918, the upper age limit was set at 51 years. Conscription was not a popular decision. Some 200,000 people demonstrated against the Act at Trafalgar Square shortly after its introduction. In the end, some 2.5 million men were conscripted for the duration of the war and in its immediate aftermath.

Arthur had not volunteered to go and fight in the first year of the war. Nor had he been taken in the first wave of conscription. His job, in a sense, saved his life. There were exemptions for conscription: men who were medically unfit, clergymen, teachers, and some industrial workers such as miners and farmers. Anyone else, like Arthur, could apply to a local tribunal for an exemption based on individual circumstances. So, in April 1916, he stood before the panel in Manchester Town Hall and pleaded his case. He was given a temporary exemption lasting just a few months until his employer could find a suitable replacement.

There was another, more pressing reason why Arthur did not want to go. He was morally opposed to the war in every sense. “If to show that I love my country it is demanded that I must hate and slay those who form our enemy, then I can never show it,” he stated. He had held these views for a number of years, after being inspired by a lecture on Tolstoy at his Methodist church in April 1911 and thereafter vowing to fight for peace and to stand against injustice, poverty and ignorance.

And so it came to be that Arthur deliberately ignored his call-up papers to report for duty in November 1916. When they arrived again in January 1917 he gave himself up to Moston police station. From there, he was taken to the Minshull Street Police Court, fined £5 and handed over to military police.

Arthur was one of around 16,000 men who were labelled conscientious objectors. Many of these men accepted alternative military service in non-combative roles but 6,000 refused this option and were sent to prison. Arthur was among them. After his trial at Manchester he was sent to a military barracks at Ashton-under-Lyne and placed in the guard room. When he refused to obey orders, he was court-martialled at Oswestry and sentenced to two years in prison. “I cannot accept military service, nor in any way assist in the prosecution of war. I stand for the inviolable rights of conscience in the affairs of life,” he explained in 1918.

Arthur was sent to Wormwood Scrubs and eventually ended his sentence in Strangeways. Arthur navigated the years through prison by maintaining his positive outlook on life:

“I have become to realise that the mind has more powers over the body than external conditions, consequently I am able to say that I am determined to maintain my health and soundness of mind. It has been a far greater mental struggle than physical, it requires a far greater mental effort to keep well & maintain our mental balance than it does a physical effort to stand the conditions, under which we are living and the hardship of routine. Having been brought to realise this […] I believe that I have learned one of the greatest lessons of life and it has been well worth while to spend 2 yrs in prison to learn it.”

This was not always easy. Twice he was released from prison and immediately rearrested under the Government’s ‘Cat and Mouse’ policy. On another occasion he was subjected to punishments for attempting to receive a book from a fellow prisoner. He later spoke of consuming only bread and water, and how there were no blankets for the cells. Yet, relative to the experiences of other conscientious objectors, he was quite lucky.

In May 1916, 35 conscientious objectors from other prisons in Britain were sent to the front lines in France. In theory this meant they were on active service, and when they refused to follow orders, they could be and were sentenced to death. Some of the men were verbally and physically humiliated first, by being tied to wooden stakes or barbed wire. Then, in front of a large crowd, they were sentenced to death by shooting — only to be told after a pause that their sentence had been commuted to ten years imprisonment with hard labour.

While Arthur may have been eager to keep a cheerful disposition (and certainly this was necessary to carry the weight of being a ‘conchie’), it is likely that he also avoided dwelling on the true conditions of the prison and the hard labour he was expected to perform to avoid worrying those who he had left behind on the outside.

The letters in his archival box are to and from his wife, Sarah Louisa (Louie). They offer a fascinating insight into the real lived experiences of a couple during the war. Arthur and Louie had married in February 1916 at the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Leigh. The couple spent just a few short months together, which were punctuated by fears of Arthur being called up, as he reminisced in a letter to her:

“Yes my dear it will be nice to be home again, I often sit and think of the good times in store, they will be far happier times than ever we have yet had, during those few months of our married life there was constantly that dread of me having to leave you, it hung over me like a dark cloud I always felt as though I could not get away from it and be really happy, but these dark days are nearly over, then we shall be truly happy.”

Louie, in one sense, was in a far more fortunate position than many other wives of both conscientious objectors and soldiers alike. There were no children dependent on her, and for the duration of the war she continued to live with her sister, Hettie, in Atherton. The two sisters were very close, as their parents had died while they were still children. They were brought up by elderly aunts, who in turn left them a property portfolio, meaning Louie and Hettie did not need to work as they were the landlords of 21 houses.

While money may not have necessarily been a concern for Louie during the First World War, she did not escape all the hardships. We know from her letters that rationing, introduced by the Government in 1918, was causing food shortages, and that in the months after the end of the war Atherton was affected by the ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic.

Louie’s problems were also deeply personal. As the wife of a conscientious objector, she would have faced social stigma from neighbours and acquaintances. At least 12 men from her street alone died on active service during the war, and every day she would have had to pass their grieving families with the knowledge that at least her husband did not face death on a daily basis.

She also missed her husband. In a letter from March 1918, Arthur noted that it was “42 weeks ago last Thursday” since they had last seen each other. Their only connection was through correspondence, and this was tightly controlled by the whims of the prison. Louie’s letters to Arthur are written in tiny handwriting as she attempted to pack as much information as possible onto the page; from family news about his mother and siblings to general debates around conscientious objectors. 

Anything that was deemed to be sensitive or inappropriate was censored by the prison staff, so some letters have chunks of redacted lines and the written conversation between husband and wife was quite literally cut short. One letter was returned to Louie in its entirety by the prison governor and Arthur apologised: “I am sorry you had to re-write it again. It will give you a slight idea what prison rules & regulations are.”

Faced with these circumstances and pressures, Louie tried to remain positive for Arthur’s sake in her own way. She also attempted to let him know about her needs, knowing full well that her words would be read by the eyes of other men before they reached her husband. “I am sorry you have had to go before the governor & that I shall not be able to hear from you for 3 weeks. I suppose mothers & wives have to be punished also, but don’t let it trouble you. I will wait patiently until I hear again […] Arthur please don’t do anything that will make it any harder for you if you can help it.” 

In another letter she wrote: “I am thinking about you altogether when I am not talking to anyone. […] I shall be watching the clock now on Sundays from 5:45 to 6:45 especially, poor little dear only out of his cell for one hour on Sundays, it is a shame. I wish this wicked war would cease,” before adding further down, “Have you got any thinner & how is your hair? I hope you are not going bald, massage your head every day.”

We can only imagine how Louie felt when she received the thin Post Office telegram in April 1919 which read “Just out am coming cheerio Arthur.” After serving a longer sentence of two-and-a-half years, Arthur was finally released and formally discharged from the army the following month. There were, of course, conditions to this. He was informed that “should he attempt to join H.M. Forces he will be liable to two years imprisonment”, which apparently gave him a great deal of amusement.

Arthur, somewhat bravely, returned to Atherton after the First World War and made his home there once more. He later opened a thriving health food shop. His time in prison and the strengths of his convictions prepared him for whatever comments and jibes were thrown his way. His pacifism and fight against injustice continued for the rest of his life. In 1923, he and Louie converted to Quakerism, and he was described as “indefatigable in his work for peace” throughout the twentieth century. 

In the 1960s, a relative from America wrote to him after being imprisoned for protesting against the Vietnam War. “Your example has set my feet on a path to search for light, to listen to the still small voice within, and to act in the spirit of truth. I am far from reaching these goals, but I want to thank you for helping to create these values in my life.” He was also passionate about promoting his other great causes, vegetarianism and socialism, and once caused quite a stir at a Mother’s Union meeting by addressing them as “comrades”.

Arthur was also a friend to many. Perhaps it was because of the injustice he faced in his youth, or perhaps it was just his cheery outlook, but it was said that “he loved everyone and had the gift of making warm friendships with the people he met.” He cared for Louie until her death aged 85, and then for her sister Hettie, and his own sister Edith. Arthur died in December 1982 at the age of 94. His life of almost a century had seen some of the most dramatic and harrowing events of modern history but, as Arthur would no doubt agree, he was just an ordinary man who faced an extraordinary battle.