The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-02-02 00:00:00

THE FEARFUL DISTRESS IN TURKEY.

A letter in the Mats (Paris paper), contains the follow-
jug appalling details :
- -

_
"It is impossible not to feel awe-stricken at this
immense exodus. It is Biblical in its proportions, and
suggests the flight from Egypt, and the migrations that
followed the fall of Nineveh and Babylon. The popu-
lation, maddened by the fear of the Bulgarians, rush
in crowds to the railway; men, women, and children
accumulate in such dense masses that the drivers have
to stop their train, and then the Panic-strichen mass
take the train by storm. They swarm up the sides of
the vans and carriages; they clamber on to the roofs
and cluster there when the inside is filled. There the
cold seizes them, and the weakest drop down from ex-
haustion, or, dying in the midst of their fellow fugi-
tives, are flung on to the line. ID one train, the
arrival of which I witnessed, not fewer than ten
women and children had died from the effects
of the cold ; I saw their corpses removed
from the midst of their companions, who were all in a
dreadful condition. Most of the men and even some
of the women had a gun slung across their shoulders,
but they were half naked and in such a state of ex-
haustion that force was required to march them to the
khans and mosques where they find a temporary
refuge."

The Standard of Monday publishes the following,
from their Special Correspondent at Constantinople,
under date Monday, Jan. 28 :

" I have just seen Colonel Blunt, who has been engaged
at,Tchorlou since the 12th instant in relieving the refugees.
lie assures me that since the 12th inst. one thousand and
ninety-thred railway waggons, carrying at least fifty-five
thousand refugees, have passed through rchorlou. This
is wholly irrespective of vast numbers of refugees
who have travelled by the common road on foot, or
on arabas. Ile says that the misery of the refugees
baffles every attempt to relieve it. The waggons are so
crowded that little children are frequently trampled to death
in them and found dead on the arrival of the train at the
station. The roofs of the closed carriages are covered with
refugees, and little children roll off them into the snow.
rlanks are stretched across the buffers, and refugees sit
thereon, in great peril of being thrown off. The iron orates
for luggage which swingbeneath the carriages are filled with
prostrate refugees, who become so cramped with cold that
they cannot be moved at the stations, and have to be fed
through the bars of the crate. In one crate Colonel Blunt
saw fifteen persons, one of whom had died on the road, but
the rest were so cramped and jammed together that the dead
body could not be separated from themselves by the living.
When a train stops the refugees dare not leave the waggons
for any purpose, for fear of losing their places, and the
fearful condition of the carriages and yassengers after a
journey of three or four days ie indescribable.

"Many women have been so maddened by misery that
they have killed their children ; some have been seen to
place their children on the rails in front of the advancing
train. At the bridge of Mourratlekesel Kupru many women
were seen to throw their children from the train into the
river. At Tchorlou station a woman was seen to kneel
down by the side of the train and stab her two children to
the heart. The railway guard who saw them being mur-
dered, and in vain shouted to her to stop, reports that
when he cante to her she declared that she )ad killed her
children so that they might never know such misery as she
was enduring. All the horrors that we read of in accounts
of famous ancient sieges and wars are being repeated
now.