Views of pacifist prisoners recorded in jail album

An album containing the thoughts and illustrations of conscientious objectors (COs) held in prison during World War One (WWI) is to be sold at auction.

The booklet contains stories, images and poems from the prisoners held in Dartmoor jail in Devon from 1917.

Record show 1,000 COs, also known as "conchies", were imprisoned in the jail from 1917 - with some of their stories reflected in the 58-page album.

The book, which was later passed on by one of the former prisoners to another pacifist, is being offered for sale at Hanson Auctioneers in Derby on 13 August.

Hansons said the album recorded how the Napoleonic jail was first renamed Dartmoor Work Centre, and then Princetown Work Camp, during WW1.

A spokesman for Hansons said: "Imprisonment was a far cry from the men's civilian days. Viewed as traitors and cowards, they were often treated worse than prisoners.

"Punishments included fines, solitary confinement and hard labour shifting granite on the famous moor."

One page of the album contains a pen-and-ink illustration by book illustrator George Peace Micklewright (1893-1951) who went on to create a series of satirical cards detailing the life of a CO.

Micklewright refused to take part in any aspect of the war effort, and was imprisoned at Lichfield, Warwick and Wormwood Scrubs before being sent to Dartmoor.

On another page Wallace Cartwright wrote: "If music be the food of love - play on." Cartwright was 18 at the time of his imprisonment with documentation from the army authority asserting: "An eighteen-year-old could have no beliefs strong enough to warrant exception from military service."

On another page William Shaw wrote on May 17, 1918: "The machine gun is powerful. But a united working class can spike it."

Hansons' militaria specialist Matt Crowson said: "Even after the war, COs were denied employment with many carrying the stigma of for years.

"But in hindsight, this group of men have been increasingly recognised for their courage and moral conviction.

"The Peace Pledge Union among others now honours their stance and various memorials, including the CO memorial in Tavistock Square, London, unveiled in 1994, pays tribute to their convictions."

The book has been through several hands since WWI and the anonymous seller is hoping it will find a good home.

She said the book had been passed to her husband's father many years after WW1.

"My husband's father was of Irish descent and too young to fight in WW1 but was a pacifist by nature.

"He worked in the Channel Islands as a butler in the 1920s and it was then he met a fellow pacifist - actually one of the COs who had been imprisoned at Dartmoor - and he gave him the book.

We subsequently re-discovered the book amongst his father's possessions when he died.

"We have been looking after it ever since but would very much like to find it a good 'home' for posterity."

Follow BBC Devon on X, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].