Alfonso Samms Ww1

[peterwarr]

Does anyone know anything about Alfonso Samms in Sheffield during WW1 please?

I’m writing about conscientious objectors during the war, and have been reading local newspaper reports of the Tribunals which heard applications for exemption from call-up. A report in September 1916 concerns yeast dealer Alfonso Samms – a Socialist member of the Sheffield Board of Guardians, who was well-known for his anti-war activities. (A year previously he had been sentenced to two months in prison for attempting to cause disaffection among wounded soldiers in the Guardians’ hospital.) The South Yorkshire Appeal Committee ordered him to join the army’s Non-Combatant Corps, but he refused.

I’ve not been able to learn more about him. Did he change his mind? Was he put in prison? Or what? What else did he get up to? Another of the many sets of intriguing questions about that period in the city!

I see from Trefcom’s Roll of Honour that a Ralph Samms died in the war – possibly a brother or son?

Thanks, Peter

[RichardB]

Don't know if it helps at all, but all knowledge being good knowledge

Alfonso was a Yeast Dealer at 9 Ribston Road, Attercliffe certainly from 1911 through to 1919; by 1925 he is an Insurance agent (same address).

[dunsbyowl1867]

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/59391533

[dunsbyowl1867]

Born 1882 Wakefield - died Sheffield 1960

[dunsbyowl1867]

Does anyone know anything about Alfonso Samms in Sheffield during WW1 please?

I’m writing about conscientious objectors during the war, and have been reading local newspaper reports of the Tribunals which heard applications for exemption from call-up. A report in September 1916 concerns yeast dealer Alfonso Samms – a Socialist member of the Sheffield Board of Guardians, who was well-known for his anti-war activities. (A year previously he had been sentenced to two months in prison for attempting to cause disaffection among wounded soldiers in the Guardians’ hospital.) The South Yorkshire Appeal Committee ordered him to join the army’s Non-Combatant Corps, but he refused.

I’ve not been able to learn more about him. Did he change his mind? Was he put in prison? Or what? What else did he get up to? Another of the many sets of intriguing questions about that period in the city!

I see from Trefcom’s Roll of Honour that a Ralph Samms died in the war – possibly a brother or son?

Thanks, Peter

Looks like Ralph was his son

[madannie77]

Does anyone know anything about Alfonso Samms in Sheffield during WW1 please?

I’m writing about conscientious objectors during the war, and have been reading local newspaper reports of the Tribunals which heard applications for exemption from call-up. A report in September 1916 concerns yeast dealer Alfonso Samms – a Socialist member of the Sheffield Board of Guardians, who was well-known for his anti-war activities. (A year previously he had been sentenced to two months in prison for attempting to cause disaffection among wounded soldiers in the Guardians’ hospital.) The South Yorkshire Appeal Committee ordered him to join the army’s Non-Combatant Corps, but he refused.

I’ve not been able to learn more about him. Did he change his mind? Was he put in prison? Or what? What else did he get up to? Another of the many sets of intriguing questions about that period in the city!

I see from Trefcom’s Roll of Honour that a Ralph Samms died in the war – possibly a brother or son?

Thanks, Peter

The 1915 event for which he was imprisoned as reported in The Press, a New Zealand paper, 6th October 1915!

http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=CHP19151004.2.43

[madannie77]

Page 25 of "Sheffield Players in World War One"

Nothing revelatory, but a nice summary for those of us who knew nothing of the man before today!