1 September 2006

Private Harry Farr should not have been pardoned, says psychiatrist

The first psychiatric paper examining the death of Harry Farr, who was shot for cowardice during the First World War, has questioned the Government’s decision to pardon Private Farr and all others executed for military offences during the war.

Writing in the September issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Professor Simon Wessely, a psychiatrist and Director of the King’s Centre for Military Health Research¹, examines the events leading up to Private Farr’s execution.

“It is more important for us to understand the circumstances in which Private Farr was executed rather than rewrite history from the comfort of our modern sensibilities,”

said Professor Wessely.

“Private Farr had been hospitalised for shell shock on three different occasions before refusing to go to his frontline on the 17 September 1916. However, shell shock is not the same as post-traumatic stress disorder as we now understand it.

“We can be sure that on the day in question Private Farr was in a state of intense fear, but so were all of the men in his battalion who faced the prospect of ‘going over the top’, as indeed they did the following morning, in an attack in which 150 out of 600 were killed or wounded,”

he said.

“Was Farr a coward as they said at the time? We don’t know and no longer have to even think about the distinctions between fear and cowardice. Cowardice is not mentioned in a single modern textbook of psychiatry but in the First World War doctors did not have that luxury and had to make those judgements, no matter how difficult they were,”

said Professor Wessely.

“Shell shock was already falling into disrepute by 1916 and was seen by many as a convenient medical label to avoid duties on both sides of the trenches. So even though his Court Martial knew about Farr’s history, it did not provide an automatic defence.

“Private Farr’s execution was tragic and I wish it hadn’t taken place. He was very unlucky, since in nine of ten similar cases death sentences were not carried out. But we can understand why Farr was the exception. Those who judged Farr in 1916 could not read history backwards; they did not know that the British Army would withstand the terrible strains of industrial warfare and go on to win the war two years later. The French, Russian and Italian armies all succumbed in 1917. As a regular solider, Farr was expected to set an example to the untried, non-professional soldiers of Kitchener’s Army.

“It was a very bad night to desert. None of Farr’s mates spoke up for him probably because they felt he had let them down on the one night when he was most needed, said Professor Wessely.

“The people in 1916 were better placed than we are to make these terrible judgements about character, mental breakdown and duty. We should be thankful we do not have to make those choices and grateful that we do things differently now. But we should not succumb to the temptation to rewrite history to make ourselves feel more comfortable about the past,”

Professor Wessely said.

¹ King's College London

[ends]

The life and death of Private Harry Farr [PDF 62k]

‘The life and death of Private Harry Farr’ by S Wessely is published in the September 2006 issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

JRSM is the flagship journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. It has been published continuously since 1809. Its Editor is Dr Kamran Abbasi.