Harry Edward Stanton was born in Luton in late 1894, the son of farrier and blacksmith William Asplin Stanton (died May 1st, 1909) and his wife Kate (nee Craddock). He was a Quaker with strong conscientious objections to doing military service in World War One, although he had a brother and friends serving in the Army.

As the Military Service Act to introduce conscription was ending its passage through Parliament in January 1916, Harry, a warehouse clerk, wrote a letter to The Luton News in which he said: "I am one of a body of men in this district who will have to refuse to take up any kind of military service, whatever the consequences of such action. We cannot accept non-combatant service as an alternative, as the effect of such a course would merely be to release more men for the combatant branches, and we then should be fighting by proxy."

With society at large prepared to call Harry and his like cowards or shirkers, he would remain true to his convictions, despite failing to convince a tribunal and also an appeal tribunal of his sincerity and being assigned to non-combatant service. It was to be the start of a harrowing period of his life in which he defied all the threats, coercion and ill-treatment the military could inflict on him.

Thirty-four men had already been sentenced to death by courts martial in France. But their cases were debated in Parliament in June 1916 and the sentences were commuted to ones of penal servitude.

Harry's enlistment papers show only his name, address (89 Wellington Street, Luton), that he was a British subject and was a clerk aged 20. He did not sign the document.

A Luton News report said he was called up on March 8th, and on March 11th was handed over. He was sent first to an unnamed barracks, where he refused to be medically examined, was given detention for refusing to drill, was threatened with a rifle by an NCO and kept for long periods on a bread and water diet.

He was finally sent as a prisoner in chains to France to do non-combatant service on May 8th, 1916. As a result of his refusal to comply, he was awaiting a court martial.

On June 5th he was in guard detention awaiting trial. On June 10th he was tried by court martial at Boulogne, France, for disobeying orders in such a manner as "to show wilful defiance of authority a lawful command given by his superior officer in the execution of his office".

He was sentenced to death by being shot, a sentence commuted to 10 years penal servitude. On June 29th he was transferred to England to undergo his sentence in a civilian jail.

Here Harry agreed to be assigned to manual labour under a Home Office scheme and was sent to Dyce Work Camp, near Aberdeen, to quarry stone. Soon suspecting that conscientious objectors were being given jobs to liberate new conscripts to die on battlefields, Harry refused to work and went back to prison until 1919. He was finally released from Maidstone Jail on April 12th, 1919.