Lives of the First World War

The Richmond Sixteen were a group of "absolutist" British conscientious objectors during the First World War. Conscripted into the British Army in 1916, they refused to undertake even non-combatant military duties. Brought together at Richmond Castle, Yorkshire, most not knowing each other previously, they were transported to France, where fifteen of them were court-martialled and formally sentenced to be executed by firing squad, but this sentence was immediately commuted to ten years' penal servitude. They were released in 1919. The group was made up of Quakers, Methodists, members of the Churches of Christ, International Bible Students (now known as Jehovah's Witnesses since 1931), and socialists. They were: Norman Gaudie, centre forward of the reserve Sunderland Football Club, from East Boldon; Alfred Matthew Martlew, a clerk at Rowntree's chocolate factory in York, originally from Gainsborough, Lincolnshire; Herbert (Bert) George and William (Billy) Edwin Law, brothers from Darlington; Alfred Myers, an ironstone miner from Carlin How; John Hubert (Bert) Brocklesby, schoolteacher and Methodist lay preacher, from Conisborough; Charles Ernest Cryer, from Cleveland; Robert Armstrong Lown, from Ely; and eight men from Leeds: Clarence and Stafford Hall, brothers and International Bible Students; Clifford Cartwright, from the Churches of Christ; Charles Rowland Jackson; Leonard Renton, an International Bible Student; John William Routledge; Charles Herbert Senior, an International Bible Student; and Ernest Shillito Spencer.

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