Collections
Harpoot unit tends eighteen babies. NER Weekly, 25 Dec 1920.
Location
Harpoot (Kharpert), Turkey
Year
1920
Item Detail
The issue is built around the Harpoot baby hospital, eighteen cribs in a sunny room organized by Laura MacFetridge under Ruth A. Parmelee. The nursery day began at five in the morning, and mothers from the Rescue Home attended a lace class once their babies reached six months. Josephine Huse wrote from Sidon, where she had charge of 300 girls, to protest the painful treatment given to children with trachoma, and a following notice describes C. R. Gannaway's use of anesthesia. Glee L. Hastings lists 3,500 kilos of charcoal and 3,445 sets of underwear sent to the Constantinople camps in November.
Context
The Near East Relief Weekly Bulletin was a four-page weekly printed in Constantinople for the organization's own staff. It continued The Acorne, the bulletin of the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, and took the new title with Vol. II, No. 42 on 23 October 1920, when the organization itself was renamed Near East Relief.
Because it was written for people already in the field and not for donors at home, the Weekly is plainer than anything Near East Relief printed in America. Station reports give the numbers (e.g., children fed, beds occupied, pairs of shoes made, tons landed at Batoum) and the personnel notes record who arrived, who transferred, who married and who died.
The run covers the fall of Kars, the landing of Russian refugees in Constantinople in the winter of 1920, the famine in Armenia through 1921 and 1922, and the French withdrawal from Cilicia.
-
Holding Institution
Columbia University Library
-
External Link
-
Attribution
Digitized by Columbia University Libraries; available through HathiTrust (Public Domain).
-
Rights
No known copyright restrictions. Based on available information, NERHS is not aware of copyright restrictions on this material. Items are presented for non-commercial research and educational use. Users are responsible for determining rights status and compliance with applicable law. If you believe you hold rights in this material or have information about rights holders not currently reflected, please contact [email protected].
-
Notes
Masthead: 'Near East Relief. Vol. II. No. 51. 25 Rue Taxim, Pera, Constantinople. December 25, 1920.'
Most of the people described in these pages were survivors of the genocide of the Ottoman Armenians and of the killing and deportation of Greeks and Assyrians in the same years. The bulletin does not use the word "Genocide," which was not coined until 1944. Its writers say "the deportations", "the massacres", or simply "the troubles", and often say nothing at all about how a child came to be an orphan. Where an issue documents the events or their aftermath, the record indicates this in the Subject field. The period's own vocabulary is kept in the original article titles and in quoted phrases.
-
Document Contents
Christmas greetings report celebrations at Yedi Koule and St. Anne's Orphanage; 'The Near East Babies of Far Away Harpoot' describes the eighteen-bed hospital organized by Laura MacFetridge under Ruth A. Parmelee, its daily routine and lace work for mothers from the Rescue Home; Josephine Huse reports 300 girls at the Sidon orphanage and protests the painful treatment of children with trachoma, followed by a notice on C. R. Gannaway's use of anaesthesia; 'American Work for the Russian Refugees at Proti', signed Mabelle C. Phillips, describes a shore station where refugees received soup, shelter, baths, clean clothes and help locating relatives; a later report covers sixty beds for nursing mothers and babies under C. W. Strowger and Loretta C. Quinn; Glee L. Hastings lists charcoal, clothes, soap and 3,445 sets of underwear sent to the Constantinople camps in November; special donations and personnel notices close the issue.