Collections
5,176 children on the Harpoot roll. Acorne, 2 Oct 1920.
Location
Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey
Year
1920
Item Detail
Henry H. Riggs's August report puts the Harpoot unit's enrolment at 5,176 children, of whom 2,369 were in thirty American orphanages around the city and 1,152 were supported in the homes of surviving relatives. Its industries employed 912 workers, and it kept separate orphanages for tubercular, blind and crippled children. The palace of Riza Pasha, Grand Vezir under Abdul Hamid, had meanwhile been secured as a trachoma hospital for orphans, its forty-eight rooms equipped by Mrs. Heizer and Miss Ahlers. Dr. Graff's six child welfare clinics in Constantinople treated two thousand children in five months with seven deaths.
Context
The Acorne was the weekly bulletin of the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, produced in Constantinople for private circulation among the Committee's own staff. By January 1920, it printed a thousand copies a week for station directors in the field and for supporters in America.
Issues ran to four pages of short field dispatches and unit reports: orphan care, medical work, refugee feeding, education and workshop programs, with operational notes on supplies, rations, transport and exchange. Personnel notices recorded arrivals, transfers and departures. The bulletin took the title Near East Relief with Vol. II, No. 42 on 23 October 1920.
No complete run is known to survive. NERHS holds seventeen issues of Volume II, drawn from the Harry Pratt Judson records at the University of Chicago, the Martin Weaver Documents at the Mennonite Historical Library, and the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary.
These ten issues open Volume II in January 1920 and resume in September and October with the Robert College conference, the Greek-Turkish fighting around Ismid, and the opening of the Kuleli orphanage.
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Holding Institution
Burke Library (Union Theological Seminary)
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Attribution
Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University Libraries; photographs contributed by Shant Mardirossian
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Rights
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Document Contents
'The Home of a Former Turkish Grand Vezir Now American Near East Trachoma Hospital' describes the palace of Riza Pasha, Grand Vezir under Sultan Abdul Hamid, on the Bosphorus above Hissar, secured for the new hospital where orphans of Turkey suffering from trachoma will be treated; the house has forty-eight rooms above the basement, and in the secluded haremlek garden ten Greek boys from the Principo Greek Orphanage, who have mild trachoma and entered early to help paint the beds, are playing American football. Mrs. Heizer and Miss Ahlers had entire charge of buying the equipment; Miss Ahlers will take charge of nursing, and Miss Cushman comes from Konia to manage the hospital as Mrs. Heizer leaves for Jerusalem. 'A Visit with Miss Hastings to the Essayan Armenian Orphanage for Boys' follows Miss Glee Hastings of the Wellesley Unit, who has succeeded Mrs. Heizer as Chairman of the Orphanage Committee and supervises the Constantinople orphanages, which are managed by native committees with the Near East supplying milk, bread and clothing. The director, Mr. David Hachigian, has made the place a boys' home; a boy scout orchestra met the visitors at the top of the stairs with 'America', though three months earlier the boys did not know one instrument from another, Hachigian having trained them himself and copied the music by hand until they had a repertoire of nine pieces. 'Funds Donated to the Near East by the Wellesley Unit', signed Mabelle Phillips, records three thousand dollars given on 24 September, the balance of five thousand sent since 1 January, and itemises 5,700 dollars in all: 700 to six child welfare clinics under Dr. Graff, 500 to work in Brousa under Mrs. Darbishire, 2,000 to shoe-making in the orphanages, 250 for two scholarships at Constantinople College, 1,000 for school fees, 1,000 for milk, and 250 to Miss Hastings for bathtubs and such luxuries. 'Discarded German Sand Bags Made into Attractive Embroidered Articles', signed E. M. Wood, describes children of the Yedi Keuli Near East Tubercular Hospital working sandbags left by the Germans at Derindje into embroidered bags and cushions, taught two hours morning and afternoon by one of the patients, who has a class of fifteen small girls. 'Child Welfare Clinics, Constantinople', signed E. R. Graff, reports six clinics equipped by the Wellesley Unit, eight native nurses working under an American nurse, two thousand children treated in five months with only seven deaths, about eighteen hundred home visits a month, six hundred patients cared for at home and a thousand mothers instructed. 'Letter from Dr. Ruth Parmelee of the Harpoot Unit', dated 25 August, describes a day's truck tour of the village orphanages on the plain at Morenik, Keserik and the monastery farm at Hoolavank, and four former patients found grown well: Victore, a year earlier too marasmic to stand alone; Markrid, newly escaped from tuberculosis; Bedros, who had suffered a fractured leg and meningitis at once; and the cross-eyed Marsoob, whose spinal trouble of the previous year had left him straight and strong. 'Work in the Harpoot Area', from Henry H. Riggs's August report, puts the Unit's enrolment at the end of August at 5,176 children — 2,369 in thirty American orphanages around Harpoot, 514 at Malatia and Arabkir, 731 in German and French orphanages, 381 in Armenian orphanages at Harpoot and Mezereh, 29 in the Kurdish orphanage at Malatia and 1,152 supported in the homes of surviving relatives — with special orphanages for women escaped from Moslem homes and for tubercular, blind, crippled and mentally defective children, and industries employing 912 workers.