Stanley Kerr Letters (1919–1920)

Stanley Elphinstone Kerr (1894–1976) served as a volunteer with Near East Relief from 1919 to 1922, initially assigned to Aleppo as a clinical biochemist and sanitary officer, where he also worked as a photographer and assisted in recovering Armenian children from Kurdish and Turkoman households. In the autumn of 1919, he transferred to Marash (Kahramanmaras), where he headed American relief operations during the Franco-Turkish conflict and the siege of January–February 1920, in which an estimated 9,000 of the city’s 20,000 Armenians perished. After the French evacuation, Kerr remained with the surviving Armenian population before departing with the last group of orphans in 1922. He later published The Lions of Marash (1973), a detailed account of these events.

The letters in this selection span February 1919 to July 1920 and follow Kerr from his transatlantic voyage aboard the Leviathan to his departure from Marash after the siege. They document rescue missions with fellow volunteer John Dunaway that recovered over 450 Armenian women and girls from Arab households near Aleppo, the systematic photographing and recording of nearly 3,000 orphans at Aintab and Marash, the collapse of security during the British-to-French transition in late 1919, and the siege itself — including a twenty-page diary written in real time as artillery shells fell. The post-siege letters record Kerr feeding 8,000–9,000 survivors, negotiating with Turkish authorities, and managing relief operations as acting director under continued threat.

His photographs are presented in a companion collection. Kerr’s photographs and papers are held at the Zoryan Institute, Toronto.