"No doubt they are being looked after in the proper place."

Where They Were Sent: Some First World War Asylums

Numerous questions were put to the government ministers by MPs concerned about the treatment of conscientious objectors (COs) suffering from mental illness, to be met with reassurances that such men were being treated reasonably and humanely (and that their condition was not a consequence of official policy towards them).

Questions in the House (selection)
HC Deb 28 November 1916 vol 88 cc133 Brutality cases Thomas Sidney Overbury
HC Deb 14 March 1917 vol 91 col.1109 Alfred Eungblut
HC Deb 13 November 1917 vol 99 cc193 Persecution, repeated CMs etc. John Taylor
HC Deb 05 February 1918 vol 101 cc2068 Wandsworth, Regulation 243A John Taylor
HC Deb 10 April 1918 vol 104 cc1461- Statistics; Bertie French
HC Deb 10 June 1918 vol 106 cc1852 Seventh Day Adventists; Le Havre; Harry Burgess
HC Deb 10 June 1918 vol 106 cc1885 William Stanton

The 'proper places' to which COs were sent generally bore no relation  to their place of origin. They were not clustered in a particular location, but distributed up and down the country. Another point to note is that as far as their onliue records go, none appears to have been sent to any asylum where a fellow CO was doing 'Work of National Importance' (WNI) as a member of the staff. 

Asylums with COS as patients
Cheshire County Asylum at Macclesfield
Denbigh Asylum
Derbyshire Asylum
Devon County Lunatic Asylum Exminster

Wakefield (engraving, 1818)

Richmond Asylum, Dublin
Dykebar War Hospital, Paisley
London County Asylum at Epsom 
Hanwell (4)
Hereford County Asylum
2nd Eastern Hospital, Hove
Ipswich
Lancaster Asylum (2)
Leicestershire County Lunatic Asylum
County Asylum at Rainhill, Liverpool
Morpeth County Asylum
West Riding Asylum, Wakefield (3) 

Some of the above had been taken over as 'military hospitals' so that COs could find themselves being kept/treated alongside psychiatric casualties. 

A few COs are reported to have been 'insane' in prison, their destination asylum, if any, not noted, e.g. Shepton Mallet CP;Winston Green CP (Civil Prison), Birmingham.

"In 1914 there were over one hundred thousand patients within over one hundred mental institutions around the United Kingdom, the majority of these institutions were built since the passing of the County Asylum / Lunacy Act in 1845. With the passing of the care in the community act in the 1980’s, many of these institutions have since closed; only a few of them remain open and in the use for Mental Health services." - https://www.countyasylums.co.uk/the-asylum-list/ 

'Hanwell' (London County) Asylum

"... 119 ‘County Asylums’ in both England and Wales. [Plus] additional asylums/hospitals which [may not] come under the ‘County Asylum’ list."

As to the treatment and improvement or deterioration in the condition of COs in asylums, the facts may still be difficult for researchers to ascertain generally, although individual records may be easier for descendants or relatives of patients to access: 

"Records of lunatic asylums are not held in any one place and often not all their records have survived. Many records of asylums, prisons and houses of correction are kept in local archives and especially those of the patients and inmates. However, most patient files have been destroyed."

Several of the asylums were considered to be putting into practice more humane treatments and regimen in the wake of nineteenth century concerns about the incarceration of the mentally ill; a few are seen as having been in the forefront of such reforms.

The humane imperative was not acknowledged everywhere or in all cases, however.
A comparison:
Endeavour. 2008 Dec;32(4):134-40. doi: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2008.09.001. Epub 2008 Nov 18.

Gags, funnels and tubes: forced feeding of the insane and of suffragettes.

Williams EA1.

Abstract

Just before the outbreak of World War I, British suffragettes were imprisoned in large numbers.
Many engaged in hunger strikes and suffered brutal treatment, most notoriously forced feeding.
Government authorities, backed by prominent physicians, justified forced feeding by citing
its successful use with insane patients in asylums.
In the nineteenth century forced feeding was, in fact, common in the asylum and much discussed
in leading medical publications.
Physicians generally ignored the feelings of patients, concentrating on technical problems
such as the design of feeding instruments.
Nor did critics amid the suffrage crisis sympathize with asylum patients.
They defended women protesters but portrayed the force-fed insane as insensate.
Forced feeding of the insane was nonetheless tainted by its association with
the brutalization of suffragettes and in later years rarely discussed
outside specialized psychiatric venues.

PMID: 19019439 DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2008.09.001

[Reference: PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

(There are multiple points of similarity between government attempts to deal with 'absolutist' COs and the methods used against militant Suffragettes, especially when a hunger strike was involved.)

An Ealing Conscientious Objector’s Work of National Importance

As a 24-year-old single man, Hector Welsman Smaldon of 37 Elers Road, West Ealing, became liable for military service in early 1916. He applied for absolute exemption in February, stating his reasons:

I have a distinct objection to Combatant military service, indeed to every form of military service, consequent upon holding certain views in relation to Christianity [... Biblical quotation, “My Kingdom is not of this world...”] This scripture shows clearly that, as a servant of Christ and a follower of Him, I cannot undertake Combatant service. Nor, as  belonging to the Kingdom of God, could I take up any service in support of a system, in which Violence, and the taking of human life, have place, without contravening my principles. (16^th Feb. 1916)

When he failed to convince the Ealing Local Tribunal, he took his case to the Middlesex Appeal Tribunal (Case Number: M5513), restating his position:

As a Christian I have great objection to Combatant Military Service as contrary to the Spirit & teaching of Christ. I consider that to serve in the Army in any capacity would be a surrender  of Christian principles. (March 8. 1916)

The Local Tribunal explained its decision:

The appellant stated that he belonged to the Plymouth Brethren: that he could not undertake military service, either combatant or non combatant, for that would sacrifice his christian principles: that he felt it his duty to do all the good he could, but not as a part of any military system.

The Tribunal did not consider that there were any difficulties of conscience, particularly as two other members of the same religious body had expressed their willingness to undertake non combatant service, and the application was therefore refused.

The Military Representative made no observation on this case.

!3/3/16

By the time the Appeal Tribunal recorded its decision, after an adjournment of the hearing, Hector’s situation had changed.

Decision [1st May 1916].

Temporary exemption 6 mos. from today conditional upon his remaining in the position as an attendant at the City of London Lunatic Asylum, or in a similar position elsewhere.

The exemption was granted on the ground that “a conscientious objection to military service has been established”. His normal employment had been as a Traveller for a firm – the firm* – of Ostrich Feather Manufacturers, Botibol & Co., but he had been referred to the Committee on Work of National Importance which wrote to the Appeal Tribunal on 12^th April stating they had been informed that the Medical Superintendent of the City of London Asylum located in Dartford, Kent, had “employment suitable for Mr. Smaldon” and that it was desirable he should take up his duties on the 17^th. The arrangement evidently suited him; he asked for it to be made permanent rather than temporary. Instead he had to go through the process of applying for repeated extensions of his exemption throughout the war, resulting in a massive 80-page compilation of filed paperwork. 

He was not usually required to attend the hearings, however. The Medical Superintendent testified to the quality of his work, and didn’t want to let him go A couple of attempts by the local Military Representative to have his exemption withdrawn got nowhere. He stayed in post at least until the end of the war, possibly longer – it was in Dartford that he married, in 1921.

Hector Smaldon was far from being the only CO directed to work in a “lunatic asylum” (there were upwards of 60 as recorded on the Pearce database) but must have been one of the first, and possibly least reluctant. Among his co-workers in 1916-19 were about a dozen overall, for varying lengths of time; Richard Thomas Shirley of Westminster found the work didn't suit him, while Robert William Miller of Islington complained that the strain 'of 14 hour days with lunatics' was making him ill. About 30 COs appear to have been recorded as ‘certified insane’ during the war, but there are few if any matches between the asylums to which they were committed (including Hanwell in at least 4 cases) and those to which their (to some extent) co-thinkers had been sent to do their 'work of national importance'.

Smaldon Family background

Hector’s older brother William James was also a CO, whose objection was recognised by the Ealing Tribunal to the extent of granting him Exemption from Combatant Service only. Apparently without lodging an appeal, he was drafted into the Non-Combatant Corps, and within a few months was in France. He survived to be demobbed after the war, late in 1919.   


The 1911 Census shows the Smaldon household: Hector Welsman (mistranscribed as Welsham on ‘Find my Past’) aged 19, a Clerk in a Drapery Warehouse, living at 37 Elers Road with his widowed mother, and 26-year-old brother William James, a Tramway Motor Man. Both brothers had been born in Hull. There were three boarders, William and Harold Lucas, probably father and son, and Harold Davies whose brother (probably) was also present on census night, visiting from Taunton. In 1901 Hector's and William's father, a ship's watchman, was still alive, and the family were living in Kingston upon Hull.

The Smaldons’ (and boarders') address in West Ealing

Hector eventually returned to his county of birth, Yorkshire, where he died in 1987.

*Botibol: a name to conjure with in ostrich feather circles...

A. Theft from a specified place, 8th October 1912: BREWER, William (32, carman) pleaded guilty, of ... breaking and entering the warehouse of Cecil Munton Botibol and stealing therein 144 ostrich feathers and other articles, his goods...          Sentence: Three years' penal servitude.      http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t19121008-16

B. Lady Hawk's Folly - Google Books Result. Amanda Scott - 2013 - ‎Fiction      https://books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=1480415294            “... to Oxford Street and the premises of W. H. Botibol, plumassier, in order for Mollie to purchase a pair of ostrich feathers to wear in her hair that evening...”

C. The works of William Makepeace Thackeray: i. "By Saint Botibol, say not false," groaned the elder warrior...        ii. "... A small prince's coronet of gold, from which rose three pink ostrich-feathers...”       https://archive.org/stream/.../workswilliammak15thacgoog_djvu.txt

A further sidelight on asylum attendants around this time.
Source: https://libcom.org/files/occupational-hazards.pdf - p.53 of pdf, 48 of pamphlet