Six weeks ago at the Marazion Meeting House, I was handed a folder which contained the printed account of Fred Murfin's three years in prison as a C.O. (Conscientious Objector) during World War One. I had not seen this treasure in the Marazion Quaker archive before and now I was being asked, as the Meeting's librarian, to do whatever I felt fit with this document. The pages had been punch-holed and fixed together - but out of sequence at one point - and there was no proper cover. It had been written by Fred Murfin in 1965, six years before his death in 1971, and first published through the Tottenham Meeting House in 1965. At some point in his later life, Fred Murfin became a member of the Marazion Quaker community and worshipped here with Wilfred Tregenza, another C.O. who served time in prison for refusing to kill in World War One (see my earlier blogpost here by pressing this link). When our most senior member today, Tony Fitt, first attended the Marazion Quaker community with his wife, the late Moira Fitt, in the 1960s, he had the privilege of knowing both these gentlemen.
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| Fred Murfin (1888-1971) - a Quaker C.O. during WW1 and author of PRISONERS FOR PEACE |
It has now been my privilege to bring this invaluable historical document to fresh life through the services of PlusPrint at Long Rock, Penzance. I cannot be sure how many copies were in existence before this reprint at the end of last year but apart from the Marazion copy there are only four others recorded: one in the Cornwall Area Meeting (CAM) library (CAM have the copyright); one in the Euston Road Quaker library in London (their catalogue card says "the original is with Bertha Fox"); and one in the Liddle Collection of the University of Leeds library. I have had 25 copies printed of this new
