Henry was the eldest child of a large and poor family. His father was a boot and shoe worker. Henry left school early and went to work in the shoe industry like his father, followed by all his siblings.

Like many other conscientious objectors Henry Firth was caught up in a cat and mouse game with the authorities following his appearance at Tribunal. He was refused exemption and ended up in Wormwood Scrubs. Refusing again when his first prison term ended he was moved to Maidstone prison when he fell ill. Illness persuaded him to accept participation in the Home Office Scheme and he was moved to the Princetown Work Centre on New Year’s Eve 1917. He was described as a ‘bag of bones’ when he arrived and without being examined by a doctor was set to work in the quarry in the bitter cold.

A fellow CO describes him as: ‘broken in health both physically and mentally by long imprisonment, he was sent to work here on the bleak moors, at a time when the weather was at its worst and in spite of the fact that from the first he appeared to be in a dying condition. He was ordered to the Heavy Quarry Party; the change from confinement in a prison to the high bleak hills of Dartmoor was so sudden that the poor fellow suffered terribly from the cold and when too weak to work was charged with slacking. A number of times he endeavoured to get treatment at the hospital but was turned down with a sneer and a gibe about the 'men in the trenches'.

By the end of the January he was finally admitted to the hospital from where he wrote to his wife Ethel who he had not seen for over a year. She arrived the day after he died.

A male voice choir led the procession of hundreds of men out of the prison gates down the mist-shrouded road to the station. Henry’s coffin was carried by a contingent of Norwich COs. Two days later over 500 conscientious objectors withdrew their labour for a day in protest of the treatment of COs by the doctor and wardens.

At the inquest the solicitor acting on behalf of Ethel asked about Henry’s treatment but both Dr Battiscombe and Dr Hillyer said that Henry received every care possible.