Any penalty for incorrect attesting?

[jonbem]

Hi all

My Great Great Uncle George fell foul of the "incorrect age",  I guess under Discharge - Kings Regulations Para 392.

Two questions,

1) was there any penalty other than discharge and the "shame" of being kicked out?

Service number 3698 Regiment East Yorkshire Regiment - 15th Foot Year 1902 Attestation date 15 Sep 1902 (DOB actual 1887)

2) would he have been rejected for service in WW1 as his previous attempt merited the discharge?

 

I am searching to see what I can find for the war years, my last details were his marriage in 1911 & 1911 census

 

 

regards

Jon

[ss002d6252]

I've not seen much in the way of serious action taken against men who made the misstatement - most seem to have been simply discharged.

In theory any later enlistment should have taken account of his earlier service as he should have declared it but it was easy enough not to declare it and in most cases the army wouldn't be any the wiser. Once the war started to move on a minor infraction like that wouldn't have stopped service.

Craig

Edited 1 May , 2017 by ss002d6252

[Moonraker]

Someone in Reading, Berkshire was so enthusiastic to enlist that he didn't reveal a hip condition and had to be discharged after a month - and was given one month's hard labour for wasting time and costing the country money - and the sentence was reduced because he had a wife and three children. In contrast six months' hard labour was the sentence for a man who molested a nine-year-old girl - his ninth such offence; and another person got six weeks' hard labour for stealing a bicycle lamp.

 

Moonraker

[eairicbloodaxe]

My mothers father enlisted in 1914 two weeks after the war started. He was 15. 

 

He lasted a year before they found him out and he was discharged.

 

Fast forward a few years and now the right age, in early 1917 he joins up again, this time into the RFC, for pilot training.

 

Saw action in France from June 18.

 

So I guess there wasnt much of a penalty for the brave stupidity of youth!

 

Regards

 

 

Ian

[Magnumbellum]

There are two factors to be borne in mind:

 

Although there has never been a charge for registration of a birth, since it became compulsory in 1837, there has always been a charge for the non-compulsory issue of a certificate of registration of birth. This meant that poorer families, particularly those without much literacy, never bothered with one, This sometimes led to vagueness about actual date of birth and age, in an age when formal verification was rarely called for,

 

In particular, it meant that in WW1 the authorities could not not insist upon proof of age, and recruiting officers accepted a great deal on trust - sometimes, it is clearly known anecdotally - deliberately "turning a bilind eye".

 

In such circumstances it could be more trouble than it was worth in framing a charge. Moreover, since, once it was established that the youth concerned was under age, his enlistment was not legally effective and ipso facto he was not subject to military law. The simplest thing all round was to send him packing, with a one-way ticket home.

[David_Underdown]

As I recall there are some questions on the attestation form, chiefly those relating to any previous service, which are flagged with a statement that this misstatement of answers to those questions could lead to imprisonment with hard labour.  I don't believe that age is among them, which would suggest that any consequences were certainly of less serious nature.

[Ron Clifton]

Any charge would be laid under Section 33 of the Army Act, "giving a false answer upon attestation." As David says, the maximum punishment was imprisonment (itself limited to a maximum of two years - anything longer was "penal servitude") but, like all but two of the Sections, this was qualified with "or such less punishment as in this Act mentioned". The punishments are listed in Section 44 in decreasing order of severity.

 

It is most unlikely, especially during the War, that an under-age (or over-age) recruit would have been given any serious punishment. The Army needed every able-bodied man (or boy) it could get, and anyone capable of being turned into an efficient soldier within the normal training period was likely to be retained if at all possible.

 

on