The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-01-26 00:00:00

TURKISH FUGITIVES.

The Times of Monday publishes the following letter :
Sir,—According to the latest news which has come
from Constantinople it appears that the state of the
fugitives and emigrls• is of the most alarming, most
distressing, and most pitiful character. Terrified by
former massacres, more than sixty districts have been
deserted by the Mussulman families on the approach
of the enemy. These crowds of fugitives are huddled
together in the capital and in other towns, but the
later arrivals cannot by any means obtain shelter for
their weary heads, so they are scattered over the
open country in the midst of the frost and snow.
A despatch brings the intelligence that from
25,000 to 30,000 souls women, children, and
aged folk—are scattered along the line of railway
between Adrianople and Constantinople, without
resources, without shelter, weeping, groaning, striving
painfully in the midst of the most terrible suffer-
ings ; and as an evidence of their desperate condition
I venture to give the following instance :—Ami,ng the
fugitives from Nish and Pirot, who reached Bazardjik
after terrible sufferings to take the train, there were
eighty families of persons of condition who could not
obtain room in the carriages then about to leave.
Overcome by despair, the old men, the women, and the
children lay down on the rails of the line, preferring
to be crushed by the engine-wheels to the endurance of
further suffering. Force had to be used to take them
from the jaws of certain death. This single fact
should be sufficient to prove to what an extremity
their sufferings had reduced them. The English
nation, which is the admiration of the world, and
?specially of the Turkish people, who will for ever feel
grateful to them, has, from the beginning of the war,
lavished its beneficient charity upon our wounded and
suffering; but I am certain that in the face of a state
of things so deplorable, and of events unexampled in
history, the heart will be stirred to humanitarian feel-
ing, not of noble England alone, but of the whole
world—yes, even the heart of the enemy himself.

When we reflect that the greater number of the
fugitives are women, children, aged men, and invalids,
who are exposed to the rigours of this severe season,
deprived of everything and abandoned to misery, our
hearts are overcome. There can certainly be no
charity more meritorious or more truly to be looked
upon as a humane act than the alleviation of the suffer-
ings of these poor creatures.
Submitting to the noble English nation this deplor-
able, disastrous, and heartrending state of things, I
am firmly convinced that they will make fresh efforts
to assist and to alleviate the sufferings of those who
will bless them and be grateful to their benefactor.
I have the honour to be your obedient servant,
MIDHAT.
De Keyser's Royal Hotel, Blackfriars, Jan. 19.

A large /limber of that most curious firh, the lam-
pern, or river lamprey, has just been added to the already
large collection at the Brighton Aquarium. These fish,
although formerly very common in many English rivers,
are now comparatively scarce. In former years lampern
were caught and sold to the Dutch fishermen as bait for cod
fishing, and as many as 1?200,000 have been supplied for
this purpose from the River Thames in one year. The
specimens exhibited are a present from Mr. John Heming-
way, of Twickenham.

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