DAVID Wagstaff was one of the Peculiar People and that was not his only problem.

For he was a conscientious objector in the First World War and the two things went together.

The Peculiar People were an evangelical sect formed about 1840 in Essex led by James Banyard and originally known as Banyardites.

A ploughman's son, he had sown his wild oats as a youth and spent time in jail for poaching.

But at least that gave him a trade because he was taught shoemaking while inside.

Marriage redeemed him when his wife got him to attend the Methodist church and he became a local preacher but he felt called to gather his own followers when he became a 'born again Christian'.

One of his followers was a sick man, too weak and consumptive to work who, from his Bible reading, believed that he could be cured by the laying-on of hands and anointing with oil.

Banyard, with some reluctance, did this and the man was instantly cured and walked 12 miles the same day, living on for many years.

There were other cures so that it became a tenet of their faith that reliance on God was sufficient and doctors were not to be used; this led to several prosecutions when children died.

Banyard himself called in a doctor, whose work he had preached against, when his child was failing, the child recovered and thereafter he preached that faith and prayer could be still be assisted by doctors and the choice should be a matter for individual conscience but this caused a split in the church.

The sect took their name from a biblical quotation: 'The Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto Himself' - peculiar in the sense of special.

And how do I know all this? And what has it to do with Knutsford history?

Mike Wagstaff from Norfolk has been asking me about Knutsford Prison because his grandfather was sent there as a conscientious objector in 1917. Closed as a prison in 1915 it was taken over by the War Office for military offenders. Then COs, as they were called, were sent first to Dartmoor and Wakefield and when this became overcrowded some were sent to Knutsford where they immediately aroused local antagonism.

MP Alan Sykes had protested on the town's behalf and been assured by the Home Office that they would be employed on useful work and 'kept hard at it'.

They were, however, not prisoners and would have a small amount of personal liberty.

Shopkeepers objected to serving them and suggested making them wear badges so they could be identified and turned away; notices were hung up in shops and a local doctor had given one of them a 'piece of his mind and shown him the door'.

However it was thought too much to have turned them away from the library.

Following the Guardian reports, in December 1917, there was a letter signed, 'An unwilling resident in Knutsford'

The writer corrected the MP by stating that only a handful of the 400 men presently interned were doing useful work, instead 'experienced teachers, farmers, businessmen and what not are employed in teasing out bedding and filling it back into prison beds.

Here I drink a flowing pint of cocoa to the success of agitation for the removal of COs from Knutsford'. Mike Wagstaff has a photograph of his grandfather, which he believes was taken while he was in Knutsford prison.

The agitation culminated in a riot outside the prison in 1918 when local youths attacked the men; further research might reveal more but official records seem to have been destroyed.