In 1914, when the First World War began Ernest Crosby was working as a forwarding clerk in Liverpool. Active and prominent in the local Quaker community and an Adult School President, he would have held strong anti-war views likely dating to long before the beginning of the war.

It is unclear whether Ernest was involved in any anti-conscription protests before the introduction of the Military Service Act in 1916. By July 1916 it is clear that Ernest was opposed to being conscripted, as he applied to the Liverpool Tribunal for Absolute Exemption as a conscientious objector. As with the overwhelming majority of other CO applications, Ernest was unsuccessful in obtaining his legally allowed Absolute Exemption from military service, but unusually did obtain temporary exemption provided that he carried on in his position as a forwarding clerk.Forwarding clerks worked in shipping and freight and the Liverpool Tribunal would have been aware of how important Ernest’s job was both on a national and local basis.

This exemption lasted more than a year, which would have been a significant relief to Ernest and his family, but with casualties in the British Army ever mounting and no end to the war in sight, his exemption was revised in August and in February 1918, Ernest again found himself in front of a Tribunal. This time his application was judged Exemption from Combatant Service only and he was ordered to report to barracks as a soldier of the Non-Combatant Corps.

Ernest refused to obey this order and was arrested, taken to the Seaforth barracks and quickly court martialled. By April 1918 hundreds of COs had been channelled through Seaford, and the Army had quickly learnt the best way to deal with them. Found guilty of disobeying military orders at court martial, Ernest was transferred to civilian control and sent to Wormwood Scrubs Prison in London.

At Wormwood Scrubs his case was heard by the Central Tribunal which judged him a “genuine” Conscientious Objector. Instead of being given Absolute Exemption, as was his legal right as a CO, Ernest was offered the Home Office Scheme - in effect, a compromise between Government and CO whereby a CO could take up better conditions, increased freedom and be let out of prison to a work camp in exchange for undertaking work deemed to be nationally important.

Ernest accepted the Home Office Scheme and was moved to Dartmoor Camp in June 1918. Despite the offer of “better” conditions, many COs at Dartmoor found themselves in cramped, cold and damp prison cells often doing difficult labour in terrible conditions in inadequate clothing. In the conditions of the camp, many COs became ill, either through the physical exertion of the backbreaking work they were made to do, or through the waves of disease that followed in the wake of the war. For many, it was too much. Ernest survived the camp but at a cost - his health severely damaged by his illness and experiences.

Ernest was discharged in early-mid 1919 and would finally have been allowed to return home. Life, however, could not return to normal. Ernest could not return to work, and spent much of 1920 severely ill. By early 1921, he was confined to hospital where he stayed until his death in March. Ernest Crosby is one of 69 Conscientious Objectors remembered on the CO Memorial Plaque. Though he did not die during the war, his friends and relatives placed the responsibility for his death on the experiences he had been subjected to as an objector. Ernest’s inclusion on the plaque, though, is not simply to remember his needless and wasteful death, but to look forward to the future he supported and acted towards. His name is inscribed under the dedication: “It is by the faith of the idealist that the ideal comes true”.