Fraudulent enlistment

[Keith_history_buff]

It's a different time period, but the following may be of interest:

3624 Frank Richards, born 1873 in Bedminster
Attested under regular terms of service in the South Wales Borderers on 3 Feb 1891 at Horfield.
Enlisted on 3 Feb, discharged on 24 Feb 1891 for making a false answer on attestation. NoK Father: Frank Snr.
(Had enlisted in the Somerset Light Infantry 4th Bn militia (3534) on 16 Sep 1890. )

3835 David Daniel Tipples, born 1867in Llandaff, Cardiff
Attested under regular terms of service in the South Wales Borderers on 18 Nov 1891 at Brecon.
Convicted of making a false answer on attestation. Discharged with ignominy on 27 Jul 1892.

Charles Bramley, born 1878 in Talgarth, Hay, Brecknockshire
Attested under regular terms of service in the South Wales Borderers on 24 Apr 1893 at Merthyr Tydfil.
Married at Merthyr on 14 Oct 1901.
Reenlisted on 3 July 1903, attestation makes reference to 5 years 321 days in 2nd Bn SWB prior to authorised discharge. Sentenced on 16 Oct 1903 to a month's hard labour for false attestation.
 

4975 William Powell,  born in 1871 at Blaina, Bedwellty, Monmouthshire
Attested under regular terms of service in the South Wales Borderers on 1 Aug 1895 at Brecon.
Convicted of making a wilfully false answer on attestation & sentenced to 6 calendar months imprisonment & to be discharged with ignominy effective 24 Sep 1895. Discharged 28 Sep 1895.
(Had enlisted in the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers (Militia), 1464, on 22 Apr 1895.)

[PRC]

Probably not a serial enlister as he may only have been ASC and RFA, but an indication of either criminal intent or mental illness, and showing the ease with which a man could dupe the military authorities when everything was paper based, individuals were not photographed, and telephone communication was probably still the exception.

From the edition of the Norwich Mercury dated Saturday, 14 September 1918.

A TASTE FOR DESERTING

WAR OFFICE PUZZLED BY LAD’S ARMY CAREER.

ABSCONDED FROM N. & N. HOSPITAL.

At London Sessions on Tuesday, Alfred Long, 24, who was wearing the 1914 ribbon and other decorations, was found guilty of stealing a truck. Sentence was postponed for a report on the man’s mental condition.

It was stated that the prisoner was the son of a fish merchant at Bury St. Edmund’s. As a boy he absconded from Dr. Barnardo’s Homes, and joined the Army in 1913. Soon after the war broke out he was charged as a deserter. He had a various times claimed to belong to several different battalions of the Essex Regiment. He was admitted to hospital at Chelsea as Corpl. Long, of the R.F.A., suffering from gas poisoning. In 1916 he was charged as a deserter from the A.S.C., and the following month as a deserter from the R.F.A. He was removed under escort from Southampton, but got away.  After that he was for some time in Netley Hospital. When taken to a rest camp at Southampton he escaped on the following day, and a few days later was arrested at Aldershot, but again escaped while being escorted to France. He was rearrested in February, 1917, and while being detained at Woolwich once more escaped. Within a few days he reported himself at Thornton Heath Hospital as a corporal of the Cambridgeshire Regiment, and was treated for a gunshot wound in the left shoulder. A month later he was at Ipswich Military Hospital as a corporal of the Norfolk Regiment. On March 16th he absconded from the Norwich and Norfolk Hospital with some money belonging to wounded soldiers, but was arrested at King’s College Hospital, where he reported himself as a corporal of the Dragoon Guards. He received sentence of six months imprisonment for the offence. He was now posing as a corporal of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. The witness added, “The War Office says he has told so many lies that they are at a loss to know who he is.”

Sir R. Wallace, K.C., said that he was amazed at the ease with the man had escaped so often.

Cheers,
Peter

[knittinganddeath]

On 11/06/2023 at 12:03, PRC said:

 

Sir R. Wallace, K.C., said that he was amazed at the ease with the man had escaped so often.

Me too!

 

On 10/06/2023 at 23:10, Keith_history_buff said:

Enlisted on 3 Feb, discharged on 24 Feb 1891

Interesting to me is how they caught all the guys in your examples within very little time, relatively speaking.

Anyway, I found a paper from 1996 by Neil C. Smith -- "Aliases of the Australian Military Forces 1914-1919" -- which is relevant although short. So yay, I guess!

[rolt968]

54 minutes ago, knittinganddeath said:

Me too!

I'm not. The serial deserter whom I have been researching on and off for years also seems to have escaped military custody on a number of occasions.

[Dave1346]

On 09/06/2023 at 11:15, FROGSMILE said:

That’s a really good question Dave and I don’t know the answer.  You have made me curious as to whether that caveat was just a WW1 development (as I’m inclined to suspect) or whether it also appeared on prewar enlistment documents.  I can’t recall seeIng that wording previously.

As I understand it, while citizens in England and Wales were required to register new births with the local registrar starting in 1837, birth certificates were not issued until 1874. In practice, not all births were registered. Compulsory registration with penalties for noncompliance began in 1875. Although everyone under the age of 39 should have had a birth certificate, War Office instructions that were issued on the 1st of August, 1914 within Regulations for the Medical Services of the Army, the Regulations for Recruiting, and the regulations for the Territorial Force gave medical examiners the discretion to decide a recruit's "apparent age," based on their appearance and physical stature, when prospective recruits did not provide a birth certificate as proof of age. 

[FROGSMILE]

On 15/06/2023 at 18:12, Dave1346 said:

As I understand it, while citizens in England and Wales were required to register new births with the local registrar starting in 1837, birth certificates were not issued until 1874. In practice, not all births were registered. Compulsory registration with penalties for noncompliance began in 1875. Although everyone under the age of 39 should have had a birth certificate, War Office instructions that were issued on the 1st of August, 1914 within Regulations for the Medical Services of the Army, the Regulations for Recruiting, and the regulations for the Territorial Force gave medical examiners the discretion to decide a recruit's "apparent age," based on their appearance and physical stature, when prospective recruits did not provide a birth certificate as proof of age. 

Yes that makes sense Dave.  I was aware that birth certificates had been in use for some time.  The problem for working class people  of those times (from whom the vast majority of enlistees traditionally came), was the chaotic and tenuous lifestyles that they had in either tied or rented accommodation, often of just two rooms with privvies outside.  Few were well enough organised to retain documentation that society was still getting used to, especially as the much larger families of those times fragmented to find accommodation of their own.

Edited 17 June , 2023 by FROGSMILE

[Dave1346]

That's a good point about the working poor. I can almost hear a magistrate complaining that ignorance of the law was no excuse not to have registered the birth of a child with the local registrar. I wonder how many of the working poor didn't even know that they had to register births. 

As you said, this was also a chaotic time. Since the UK still had a volunteer army in 1914, I think the government was keen to get as many recruits signed up for Kitchen's pal battalions as possible with a nod and a wink about minimum age requirements. 

[Keith_history_buff]

Quote

I was always a tall and fairly fit lad. When I confronted the recruiting officer he said that I was too young, although I had said that I was eighteen years of age. He said "Well, I think you are too young son. Come back in another year or so." I returned home and never said anything to my parents. I picked up the bowler hat which my mother had bought me and which was only to wear on Sundays, and I donned that thinking it would make me look older. I presented myself to the recruiting officer again, and this time there were no queries, I was accepted. Birth certificates were not asked for, although I had one, not with me but I had one.  My mother was very hurt when I arrived home that night and told her that I had to report to Mill Hill next morning. I was sixteen [on 17 June 1914.] 

Contributor: Thomas McIndoe (1898-1980)
Page 9

Source:
Forgotten Voices of the Great War
Editor: Max Arthur
Publisher: Ebury Press 
Year: 2022
ISBN: 978-0-09-188209-9
 

Link to IWM oral history recordings:
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80000564

[Keith_history_buff]

A bit of a deviation from the OP, but I had a revelation.

The hard labour sentence seemed a rather austere penalty for false enlistment, until I came across this man's service record 2202 Private John Kent, South Wales Borderers.

I was surprised to see that he was in trouble for a fraudulent enlistment 9 years after his enlistment, and it made no immediate sense to me. Then, the subsequent papers on the file told a different story. It was his intention to keep receiving payments for being in the Special Reserve, but he had reenlisted under a false name. There probably was not so much of this fraud taking place, but it then made sense that the austere penalty was in place, as a deterrent to those looking to perpetrate this form of "benefit fraud" in today's parlance.

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