MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | WIDER CONTEXT |
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MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | WIDER CONTEXT | |
| HENRY THOMAS JOYCE 1874 - |
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| Not all Conscientious Objectors were eligible for Conscription in 1916. The Military Service Act 1916 applied only to men aged between 18 and 41, but, when it was modified and extended in 1918, the upper age limit was put at 51, affecting thousands more men - several hundred of whom were determined to register as COs. Henry Joyce was one of these men. Born in 1874, he was too old to be conscripted under the first iteration of the act, but, at 44 in 1918, the extension looked likely to force him into uniform. He applied to the Twickenham Tribunal in June 1918 on several grounds, noting that as a Master Builder, the sole support of his family and as a man with a deeply held conscientious objection to war, he had several important reasons to be granted exemption. Many other COs applied on multiple grounds, but Henry took care to ensure the Twickenham Tribunal realised that his application was made primarily on the grounds of Conscience. A committed Christian, he believed that warfare was contrary to the teachings of his faith. The Twickenham Tribunal dismissed his application on grounds of Conscience, stating, in bald terms, that he was a hypocrite due to his volunteer work with the local police. With no exemption of any kind offered by Twickenham, Henry appealed to the Middlesex Tribunal, which heard his case on the 24th of July 1918 and granted him temporary exemption for three months as a result of his work as a Master Builder. By the time the three months had elapsed the building trades, stripped of qualified workers, had been placed on the list of "certified occupations" in order to preserve what meagre numbers of builders remained. Henry was allowed to let his exemption lapse, and was not called infront of a Tribunal again. Many men over 41 conscripted in 1918 had similar stories, and, with the war grinding the British economy ever harder, the needs of the nation began to finally outweigh those of the army.
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