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Is there any way to find out more about the imprisonment?

15926 Dennis Stanley Fearns did commit an offence on 16 July 1900 but whether it would have lead to his imprisonment nine months later is doubtful.

When Dennis attested on 16 July 1900 he gave his age as 20 years and 11 months, in reality at the time he was 19 years and 3 months old.

Here is on the 31st March 1901 census return above which I have attached the NoK info on his attestation papers just to prove it is him.



Actually the 1901 census is also incorrect regarding his age as he was born on 24 March 1882 and so would have been 19 years and 1 week old at the time of the census. How do I know his DoB? – he died in 1950 and thus made an appearance on the 1939 Register.

Presumably his mother gave the information to the 1901 enumerator but she would have been a bit stressed at the time and getting the age of one of her children slightly wrong is perhaps not surprising. Her husband, a mill worker, had passed away fairly recently as had her first grandchild. Also the father of her first grandchild, her eldest son John Thomas Fearns was in South Africa at the time serving as a saddler with the 23rd (Lancashire) Company of the IY who had suffered 6 killed and 12 wounded the previous May at Faber’s Spruit. But perhaps the error in the age of Dennis was down to the enumerator who got the sex of his sister, Margaret incorrect.

John Thomas arrived home a month before Dennis attested and perhaps he put the idea in Dennis’s head that you needed to be 20 to volunteer for service in South Africa (this was a stipulation for members of the IY). Quite why Dennis did not say he was 20 years and 3 months old when he attested which would still have allowed him to celebrate his birthday on 24 March I do not know. Dennis was incarcerated ten days after his true birthday – did he injudiciously celebrate his birthday too noisily causing his CO to check his paperwork? Even so it seems a bit harsh and ridiculous to take a now 20 year old and useful medic out of action for a fortnight – perhaps his CO was a stickler for the regulations, or perhaps Dennis was not one of his favourites and not that useful, or more likely there was another reason for his fortnight of incarceration.

Interesting and great work. The SJAB also had a 20 year age threshold


but 2 of the nen who died were only 19. So on that basis it looks like being under age was quite widespread, The attestation papers warn that the penatly not being truthful is 2 years of inprisonment with hard labour so perhaps he got off lightly by the standards of the day