£14.00
(reduced from £19.99) 26th June 2018 Handheld Defiants 3
The Conscientious Objector’s Wife tells the story of Frank and Lucy Sunderland. They lived in Letchworth, in Hertfordshire, north of London, with their three young children. In 1916 Frank was separated from the family when he was sentenced to hard labour for being a conscientious objector. He was not released from prison until April 1919.
Frank and Lucy wrote to each other for two and half years while Frank was incarcerated at Wandsworth and Bedford prisons.
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Description
The Conscientious Objector’s Wife, edited by Kate Macdonald, is the letters of Frank and Lucy Sunderland, written during the First World War. They were English pacifists and fervent supporters of Labour politics and the Garden City movement, and loved their Letchworth home. In 1916 Frank gave himself up for arrest after refusing to join the army when military service became mandatory for his age group.
While Frank was in prison, Lucy looked after their three children in Letchworth, and earned enough to keep the family afloat. She kept hens, collected insurance premiums and took in sewing. Her story is a struggle of single parenthood on the domestic Home Front, and her sturdy upholding of moral principles against war. Their letters are a compelling narrative of English working-class life, and an important record of the First World War.
The Conscientious Objector’s Wife gives contemporary evidence of events on the Letchworth Home Front: spotting airships, food rationing, hearing the London air-raids, the arrival of ‘Spanish flu’ in 1918, and the sufferings of the European civilian populations immediately after the war. It’s an enthralling book of social history. The introduction and notes explain its significance for the history of the British civilian experience of the First World War, British politics, the Garden City movement, feminism and women’s emancipation, adult and workers’ education, Quakerism and pacifism.
‘Lucy Sunderland provides us with a detailed look at a working class mother’s life on the home front during the war. This is really Lucy’s story for she has to adjust to the demands of the war, and becoming a single mother of three young children. Her husband, while not in a happy situation in prison, was fed and housed and had leisure to read and fraternise and miss home life. Some things are not included; if she experienced any harassment or criticism for being the wife of a CO she did not report it to her husband. She was careful not to distress him in that way. Nor did they discuss anything to do with the progress of the war, battles, casualties and so forth, perhaps to avoid trouble with the censors … A fascinating account of life on the Home Front.’ – BookWord
Media
Watch our video, which explains the background to the letters, and how we came to publish them as a book.
Watch Frank and Lucy’s grand-daughter Elizabeth read a selection of the letters, and explain their background.
Related titles
You may be interested in other Handheld books about pacifism:
A Quaker Conscientious Objector. Wilfrid Littleboy’s Prison Letters, 1917-19, edited by Rebecca Wynter and Ben Pink Dandelion (2020)
Rose Macaulay, Non-Combatants and Others. Writings Against War (2020)
