Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Biography & Autobiography Criminals & Outlaws

These Strange Criminals

An Anthology of Prison Memoirs by Conscientious Objectors from the Great War to the Cold War

edited by Peter Brock

Publisher
University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
Initial publish date
Dec 2004
Category
Criminals & Outlaws, Peace, Essays, Personal Memoirs

  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780802087072
    Publish Date
    May 2004
    List Price
    $117.00

  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780802086617
    Publish Date
    Dec 2004
    List Price
    $58.00

  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442657892
    Publish Date
    Dec 2004
    List Price
    $57.00

Add it to your shelf

Where to buy it

Description

In many modern wars, there have been those who have chosen not to fight. Be it for religious or moral reasons, some men and women have found no justification for breaking their conscientious objection to violence. In many cases, this objection has led to severe punishment at the hands of their own governments, usually lengthy prison terms. Peter Brock brings the voices of imprisoned conscientious objectors to the fore in These Strange Criminals.

 

This important and thought-provoking anthology consists of thirty prison memoirs by conscientious objectors to military service, drawn from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and centring on their jail experiences either during the first or second world wars or in Cold War America. Voices from history – like those of Stephen Hobhouse, Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, Ian Hamilton, Alfred Hassler, and Donald Wetzel – come alive, detailing the impact of prison life and offering unique perspectives on wartime government policies of conscription and imprisonment. Sometimes intensely moving, and often inspiring, these memoirs show that in some cases, individual conscientious objectors – many well-educated and politically aware – sought to reform the penal system from within either by publicizing its dysfunction or through further resistance to authority. The collection is an essential contribution to our understanding of criminology and the history of pacifism, and represents a valuable addition to prison literature.

About the author

Peter Brock (1920-2006) was a member of the Department of History at the University of Toronto. He is author of The Slovak National Awakening, and co-editor, with H. Gordon Skilling, of The Czech Renascence of the Nineteenth Century.

Peter Brock's profile page

Other titles by

Against the Draft

Essays on Conscientious Objection from the Radical Reformation to the Second World War

by (author) Peter Brock

Nation and History

Polish Historians from the Enlightenment to the Second World War

edited by Peter Brock, John Stanley & Piotr Wróbel

Liberty and Conscience

A Documentary History of the Experiences of Conscientious Objectors in America through the Civil War

edited by Peter Brock

Life in an Austro-Hungarian Military Prison

The Slocak Tostoyan Dr. Albert Skarvan's Story

translated by Peter Brock

Challenge to Mars

Pacifism from 1918 to 1945

edited by Peter Brock & Thomas P. Socknat

Polish Revolutionary Populism

A Study in Agrarian Socialist Thought From the 1830s to the 1850s

by (author) Peter Brock

The Slovak National Awakening

An Essay in the Intellectual History of East Central Europe

by (author) Peter Brock

The Czech Renascence of the Nineteenth Century

edited by Peter Brock & H. Gordon Skilling