The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon
History
The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon
Armenian question; Armenians; World War, 1914-1918 -- Atrocities; World War, 1914-1918 -- Refugees
One poor woman, who had both husband and son killed, has gone crazy,
and we haven’t any place to put her but a dark closet under the
stairway. At midnight I was awakened by her pounding on the door.
She has a nursing baby. Thank God, to-day they took her to the
hospital, where they can care for her a little better than here.
(She died two days later.) At the College compound, where the
hospital is, they have only about two thousand, and we have perhaps
twelve thousand, and every day more are coming. Those who have been
hiding with Moslem friends are coming to us day by day, and we
haven’t any place to put them. We have not been able to take the
dead from our yards, so we are burying them in the little yard by
the side of the church—twenty-seven so far. Some die every day, and
there is no shroud or coffin for them.
_Evening._
We have just had a Praise Meeting in the parlour with fifty or sixty
who could gather from the halls and rooms near, and we feel more
cheerful. We thought if Paul and Silas, with their stripes, could
sing praises in prison, so could we.
_Wednesday, 13th January._
Since Monday, the 4th, we have been giving out bread. In the morning
we sell to those who have money, and in the afternoon give free
bread to those who cannot buy, disposing of over four tons of bread
a day. Practically all the refugees from the city have their own
food, and some from the villages, too. We buy our bread from the
bazaar (market), and a very efficient and willing young Syrian has
been attending to the weighing and giving out, while groups of other
young men have been selling and distributing. The only things we
have had for carrying the bread are our clothes-baskets and old tin
bath-tubs, and they are doing good service. We have received some
gifts of food for the refugees from Moslems. One man gave over six
hundred pounds of meat, which we cooked and gave out in one section,
but it is very difficult to distribute anything except bread among
so large a number. I am speaking only of what we are doing here in
this compound, where by far the larger number of refugees are. They
are doing similar work in Sardari (the Boys’-School premises) and at
the College compound. Mr. McDowell is looking after sanitary
conditions and the streams of water flowing through the yards, which
furnish the only drinking water for the crowds, and conditions are
much improved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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