Serving in the forces with a prison record

[rob123]

Is it possible to be called up for active service during ww2 if you were tried for murder but acquited been sentenced to 18 months for wounding with intent?

[KiteRunner]

I don't think they would be able to take into account that he had been tried for murder if he was acquitted, so the only thing they could have considered would be the wounding with intent. Do you know when he was convicted on that charge?

[Olde Crone Holden]

Rob

I don't think a criminal conviction has ever been a bar to being called up to die for your country and certainly not in war time.

Career soldiers of course, quite a different set of rules - but cannon fodder wasn't fussy.

OC

[KiteRunner]

I don't think a criminal conviction has ever been a bar to being called up to die for your country and certainly not in war time.

OC, have you ever heard the "song" "Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie?

[rob123]

kiterunner

He was tried for murder in 1931 but as I say was aquited and sentenced to 18 months for wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. The reason I am asking is that he was the father of my wife's dad but he did not marry my father-in-laws mum, after he was senenced he apparently went to Australia. I also have information that he died in WW2. Some can person on this group looked him up and for and ancestry and the name and age tie in with him, apart from the fact of where he was living but that may be down to his crime, according to the records from ancestry he was in the RAF volenteer reserve, which could explain that he wanted to do his bit but may not have been called up as such. He did marry in which case my father-in-law may have half brothers and sisters he does not know about.

[Grampa Jim]

Heaven forbid that we should employ anyone with a proven record for killing or violence in our Armed Forces.

(Just for the record I was being Ironic)

[Richard]

Makes me think of Isaac 'ikey' Bogard, known as 'darky the coon', ( forgive me, as not very politically correct nowadays I know but nevertheless is how he was known), there are a few trials involving him up on the Old Bailey website just been looking through, including one of a 'riot' where he was the victim and gives his occupation as 'comedian'! He was a leading gangland figure in Edwardian London, but come the first war he was conscripted and was one of the few men to win the Military Medal. If they were happy to have a man as notorious and villianous as that can't imagine they were too fussy!

[Little Nell]

Well, if he was convicted, he presumably served his sentence and had "paid his debt to society". I see from the Times report he was very young at the time of the crime.

[JBee]

I did hear that often youngsters were given the choice prison or borstal or the army if the offence wasn't too serious. It gave them a chance to redeem themselves.

During wartime I don't think the Army had much choice - if you got called up you went unless you had a really good reason.

In peacetime as long as any record was declared and the applicant didn't try to hide anything - each case was determined on its merits.