1 murder 2 shot at dawn.

[Mick M]

On 28/06/2020 at 09:58, FROGSMILE said:

The account makes for sobering reading and one can easily imagine Morgan being a bit dim and, in drink, not believing or mentally processing that his oppo, perhaps making drunken threats, was really going to use his rifle to actually shoot the sergeant.  To be shot as an accessory in such circumstances was a tough break.  It doesn’t seem as if he had a decent defence advocate either.

I think this case was poorly investigated allowing an element of prejudice from the proposed victim to cloud the issue. I doubt they had a competent or even willing defence, the other aspect which i find odd is the swiftness of Justice, tried on 6th Feb executed on 15th. The matter was rubber stamped by the many signatories required very quickly.

 

15 hours ago, Knotty said:

Price & Morgan lay side by side in Bethune Military Cemetery 

Can I use this pic please.

[Mick M]

On 28/06/2020 at 09:45, ss002d6252 said:

Morgan does have a pension card which states 'shot for murder'. Little else on the card.

https://www.fold3.com/image/669283098?terms=1019,11967,morgan

 

The card would tie in with their having been a relative looking in to a pension - even where one wasn't paid. The numbering etc is consistent with a widows claim having been made in 1915.

Craig

Thanks I saw that but havnt access...

[FROGSMILE]

9 minutes ago, Mick M said:

I think this case was poorly investigated allowing an element of prejudice from the proposed victim to cloud the issue. I doubt they had a competent or even willing defence, the other aspect which i find odd is the swiftness of Justice, tried on 6th Feb executed on 15th. The matter was rubber stamped by the many signatories required very quickly.

Yes, I agree, it’s a great pity that all the documents have disappeared, as the legal justification and rationale behind the signatures of approval/recommendation by senior officers at each level of command (right up to CinC) ordinarily reveal a lot, even when they are quite brief.  All-in-all I can only imagine that there was a degree of fear over a perception of rebellious men shooting their SNCOs, and a sense of “pour encourager les autres”.

Edited 29 June , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[Knotty]

1 hour ago, Mick M said:

I think this case was poorly investigated allowing an element of prejudice from the proposed victim to cloud the issue. I doubt they had a competent or even willing defence, the other aspect which i find odd is the swiftness of Justice, tried on 6th Feb executed on 15th. The matter was rubber stamped by the many signatories required very quickly.

 

Can I use this pic please.

No problem at all, it was taken by myself in 2013

[rolt968]

You probably know there is a chapter about the case in Murderous Tommies (Putkowsi and Dunning)?

RM

 

[Myrtle]

16 hours ago, FROGSMILE said:

I’m not surprised given the number of rough and ready miners in the area from which they recruited.  It was by some measure the most common occupation.

Miners, and their families, had a tough life but not all were rough and ready. My grandfather for one 😃 

[FROGSMILE]

1 minute ago, Myrtle said:

Miners, and their families, had a tough life but not all were rough and ready. My grandfather for one 😃 

I meant no slight Myrtle and was speaking generally based on written and family history.

[Myrtle]

43 minutes ago, FROGSMILE said:

I meant no slight Myrtle and was speaking generally based on written and family history.

No slight taken 

[Ron Clifton]

7 hours ago, FROGSMILE said:

Yes, I agree, it’s a great pity that all the documents have disappeared, as the legal justification and rationale behind the signatures of approval/recommendation by senior officers at each level of command (right up to CinC) ordinarily reveal a lot, even when they are quite brief.  All-in-all I can only imagine that there was a degree of fear over a perception of rebellious men shooting their SNCOs, and a sense of “pour encourager les autres”.

The men were convicted of murder, largely on their own admission. There was, in both military and ordinary criminal murder cases, a mandatory death sentence. The relevant section of the Army Act does not contain the reservation seen almost everywhere else: "or such lesser penalty as is in this Act specified".

 

Ron

[FROGSMILE]

5 minutes ago, Ron Clifton said:

The men were convicted of murder, largely on their own admission. There was, in both military and ordinary criminal murder cases, a mandatory death sentence. The relevant section of the Army Act does not contain the reservation seen almost everywhere else: "or such lesser penalty as is in this Act specified".

 

Ron

 

Yes, I understand that Ron, and as a coincidence had just been reading the excellent book, Blindfold and Alone.  My comment had really just been about the unfortunate circumstances that Morgan found himself in, albeit I concede that we only have Morgan's word for his innocence.  Nonetheless, there's something in the case that induces a sense of sympathy in me.

Edited 29 June , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[Mick M]

8 hours ago, Knotty said:

No problem at all, it was taken by myself in 2013

Thank you

8 hours ago, rolt968 said:

You probably know there is a chapter about the case in Murderous Tommies (Putkowsi and Dunning)?

RM

 

Got that ta, chilling read, someone posted a link above but I will get a copy...

[IPT]

The notes at the end of the book are quite interesting too

[Mick M]

6 hours ago, IPT said:

The notes at the end of the book are quite interesting too

I have ordered it, I'm interested to see where he got access to the letters he refers to.

[Mick M]

18 hours ago, Knotty said:

No problem at all, it was taken by myself in 2013

Shall I acredit the pic to Knotty, Great War Forum?

[Knotty]

If you like, or you can use John Knott, entirely up to you😁

 

PS...MickM, the M wouldn’t stand for Morgan, would it? Relation perhaps?

 

John

Edited 30 June , 2020 by Knotty

[Mick M]

2 hours ago, Knotty said:

If you like, or you can use John Knott, entirely up to you😁

 

PS...MickM, the M wouldn’t stand for Morgan, would it? Relation perhaps?

 

John

Thanks John,

No I'm not related my hobby in retirement is writing about soldiers and I give any royalties to the RBL...

[Ron Clifton]

15 hours ago, FROGSMILE said:

 

Yes, I understand that Ron, and as a coincidence had just been reading the excellent book, Blindfold and Alone.  My comment had really just been about the unfortunate circumstances that Morgan found himself in, albeit I concede that we only have Morgan's word for his innocence.  Nonetheless, there's something in the case that induces a sense of sympathy in me.

It might be interesting to compare Morgan's case with that of Derek Bentley, executed for the murder of a policeman although he did not fire the fatal shot. Bentley was granted a posthumous pardon many years later.

 

Ron

[FROGSMILE]

1 hour ago, Ron Clifton said:

It might be interesting to compare Morgan's case with that of Derek Bentley, executed for the murder of a policeman although he did not fire the fatal shot. Bentley was granted a posthumous pardon many years later.

 

Ron

Yes, that does ostensibly seem a similar case.  Sadly Morgan’s situation does not have anything like the same public or media profile as Bentley did, and even if it did the absence of documentary record would severely hamper any attempt at seeking a posthumous pardon.

Edited 30 June , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[Wexflyer]

The presumption that there was a defense at all is unwarranted.

[IPT]

11 hours ago, Mick M said:

I have ordered it, I'm interested to see where he got access to the letters he refers to.

 

In the online version posted previously, if you scroll to the end the notes that are visible mention the "Saunders papers" for at least two of the letters.

[Mick M]

1 hour ago, IPT said:

 

In the online version posted previously, if you scroll to the end the notes that are visible mention the "Saunders papers" for at least two of the letters.

Thank you. 

[Muerrisch]

.".I am thinking that these 2 men were miners and reservists or special reservists embodied and after minimal training sent to France as replacements?"

 

Not with those numbers. Both are very early Great War regular series numbers. One or both might just have been TF or SR, discharged at end of engagement, and reenlisted as war regulars.

 

There is a mountain of evidence that many volunteers went to F&F extraordinarily soon after joining .......... the system was unable to keep up with casualties. Well-documented elsewhere on this Forum. I quote below a brief extract  from an excellent forensic historian who was once a member of this forum:

 

 

....................I think it is easy to demonstrate with the arithmetic that the Royal Highlanders had to accelerate the training of recruits in order to fill the gaps in their shattered ranks. My reading of this is that the author is effectively trying to justify why men were sent to the front with less than recommended training. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

I have finally trawled the data and there are 28 Line Infantry Regiments where the number of available trained men dipped below 100 and within these there are 12 Regiments whose reserved dipped below 50 men. Four went to zero. As we know, there were 74 paired battalions of line infantry of which five were four-battalion structures and another four had for some time been four-battalion structures - all of which would have disproportionally larger numbers of Army Reservists as their four-battalion structures exactly coincided with the period (Aug 1902-Aug 1907) that would generate Reservists mobilised for the Great War. These nine regiments generated large distortions in the Reservists data which masked a plethora of issues elsewhere. Stripping these nine Regiments out and looking at the Regiments with one pair of battalions it is clear (to me at least) that if 27* of the remaining 65 Regiments had less than 100 trained men in reserve, this was not an isolated issue.

Edited 30 June , 2020 by Muerrisch

[Myrtle]

Just reading "The Unknown Army" and came across some paragraphs on the Welsh Regiment's training. It appears that Kitchener's appeal in 1914 resulted in 141,000 men enlisting from the South Wales coalfields in the first 4 months of the War. 

"These volunteers appear to have been less malleable than most. Twice in four months, according to one of their number, the young miners comprising a battalion of the Welsh Regiment refused all orders. In May 1915, while undergoing training at the hands of instructors drawn from the Metropolitan Police and the regiment of Guards 'one of  the young soldiers was struck on a very sore arm by one of these Sergeant Majors with a heavy stick. The boy sank to the ground in great pain, his comrades went to his assistance and loudly expressed their anger, actually threatening the offender. 

'After parade meetings were held and it was decided to refuse to  'Fall In' the next morning. This was 100 % successful, there was to be no more parades until the instructors were sent away. The 3rd Battalion Welsh Regiment was  sent to Porthcawl from Cardiff to persuade us to parade, they failed in their mission. We remained in our billets for four days, we were fed as usual by our civilian landlords. We were then informed that our instructors were transferred elsewhere and accordingly resumed our training...…'

"It seems that Kitchener had feared such behaviour from these men. From the outset he had tried to dampen any distinctly Welsh ardour by preventing the Welsh language to be spoken on parade grounds and in billets."

 

It looks as if the dislike of certain NCOs probably started long before certain Welsh Battalions went overseas.  

 

[FROGSMILE]

20 minutes ago, Myrtle said:

Just reading "The Unknown Army" and came across some paragraphs on the Welsh Regiment's training. It appears that Kitchener's appeal in 1914 resulted in 141,000 men enlisting from the South Wales coalfields in the first 4 months of the War. 

"These volunteers appear to have been less malleable than most. Twice in four months, according to one of their number, the young miners comprising a battalion of the Welsh Regiment refused all orders. In May 1915, while undergoing training at the hands of instructors drawn from the Metropolitan Police and the regiment of Guards 'one of  the young soldiers was struck on a very sore arm by one of these Sergeant Majors with a heavy stick. The boy sank to the ground in great pain, his comrades went to his assistance and loudly expressed their anger, actually threatening the offender. 

'After parade meetings were held and it was decided to refuse to  'Fall In' the next morning. This was 100 % successful, there was to be no more parades until the instructors were sent away. The 3rd Battalion Welsh Regiment was  sent to Porthcawl from Cardiff to persuade us to parade, they failed in their mission. We remained in our billets for four days, we were fed as usual by our civilian landlords. We were then informed that our instructors were transferred elsewhere and accordingly resumed our training...…'

"It seems that Kitchener had feared such behaviour from these men. From the outset he had tried to dampen any distinctly Welsh ardour by preventing the Welsh language to be spoken on parade grounds and in billets."

 

It looks as if the dislike of certain NCOs probably started long before certain Welsh Battalions went overseas.  

 

That is very revealing Myrtle and not something (circumstances wise) that I have ever heard of before.  As an aside it makes me wonder what degree of unionisation there had been among these men in the years leading up to the war.  I cannot imagine anything more alien to the culture of regular soldiers and it seems to me to epitomise the clash of cultures experienced between the Army and the mass of civilian volunteers that came to make up the New Armies.  What you have recounted is very evocative of all that.

Edited 6 July , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[Myrtle]

19 hours ago, FROGSMILE said:

That is very revealing Myrtle and not something (circumstances wise) that I have ever heard of before.  As an aside it makes me wonder what degree of unionisation there had been among these men in the years leading up to the war.  I cannot imagine anything more alien to the culture of regular soldiers and it seems to me to epitomise the clash of cultures experienced between the Army and the mass of civilian volunteers that came to make up the New Armies.  What you have recounted is very evocative of all that.

The Fed ( The South Wales Miners' Federation) was founded in 1898 so the miners had a number of years before the War to become unionised 

There 's a book named" The Fed" by Hywel Francis and  David Smith, which provides a detailed 20th century history of the unionisation of the South Wales miners.

At the moment I'm wondering about the validity of a comment from "The Unknown Army" which says that although hundreds of thousands of miners volunteered or were taken from the pits not one of them appears to have been granted a commission.