With 100 years between the First World War and the present day, the stories of some Conscientious Objectors must be pieced together from the fragmentary evidence we have of their choice and struggle to resist war.

Thomas Cainey is one of these cases. Very little of his story has survived. We know that Thomas Cainey was a 25 year old Warehouseman working in the cotton trade in Manchester when the First World War began.

Even though conscription was introduced in 1916 with the first Military Service Act, there are no records of Thomas going before a Tribunal or being sent to the Army until 1918. It is unknown why this was. Perhaps his work was considered nationally important, or it is that Thomas was found to be unfit for army service. It could be that he was conscripted and resisted as a CO, but that no record of this has survived.

What we do know is that Thomas was arrested as an absentee from the army in May 1918 and that soon after he was facing a court martial for disobeying orders as a conscientious objector. By 1918 both the army and civil authorities were well practiced in arresting, processing and sentencing Conscientious Objectors, and Thomas would have found himself rapidly put through the system, finally sentenced to prison and transferred quickly to Wormwood Scrubs by June.

While at the Scrubs he was interviewed by the Central Tribunal which judged him “Class A” - a genuine CO. Even though genuine COs were, by law, supposed to be allowed total exemption, this judgement did not lead to Thomas being released. Instead he was offered the chance to take up the Home Office Scheme, effectively trading the promise to do work considered useful and important in exchange for slightly better working and physical conditions than prison. In reality, Home Office Scheme camps could be as bad as the worst prisons COs were held in and, due to backbreaking labour, poor food and inadequate shelter from harsh weather, many COs fell ill on the scheme

Thomas was no exception. With only very rudimentary medical care and crammed together with hundreds of other men, when Thomas became ill with meningitis and influenza in Minworth Camp, his health plummeted. On the 5th of February 1919, he died.

While Thomas’ story is little known, it is typical of that of many Conscientious Objectors who would die in 1919. Pointlessly kept incarcerated either in prison or Home Office camps even after conscription of men into the army had slowed, the COs were weakened by hunger and punishing routines of labour and prison. Many would die of both disease and medical neglect, becoming another casualty of the First World War.