George and Alexander Mair were part of the extensive Plymouth Brethren community living around the Moray Firth in Scotland. Living and working in Cullen, the brothers were involved in the fishing industry, which delayed their call-up as conscripts until 1917. Working in a nationally important, and food-producing industry gave them some measure of protection from the early rounds of conscription, until, in 1917, the Government began the “combing out” process, scouring the nation for ever more men to send to the Army, regardless or the nature or importance of their work.

George, born 1887, made his stand against war as a Christian who believed he could take no part, active or contributory, to the horrors of war. He would have applied to his local Tribunal in early 1917, and must have been rejected, as by May he had been arrested as an absentee and forcibly transferred to the Army at the Aberdeen Military Depot. There he would have been expected to become an obedient soldier, follow orders and willingly commit to a role as a combatant. Instead, he chose to resist and resolved to have no part in the war. His refusal was Absolute, and, spurning any offer of non-combatant work, he was sent to prison, and from there to the Home Office Scheme at Dartmoor.

Dartmoor Prison, reworked into the “Princetown Settlement for Conscientious Objectors”, was the largest of the Home Office Scheme camps, designed to house thousands of COs in near to prison conditions while they carried out work under the scheme. Fundamentally a compromise decision by the government, the scheme allowed COs a reprieve from the punishing and brutal conditions of Edwardian prisons provided that they agreed to take on nominally useful labour. George would have been put to work in construction, agricultural and manual labour tasks alongside other COs on the scheme. Though they were allowed to freely associate, and even printed their own news sheet, conditions at Dartmoor were poor, and inadequate food and medical attention took their toll on the health of many imprisoned COs. The Home Office Scheme was ended in 1919 when men who had taken it up were discharged from the Army and allowed to go home.