The Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria : letters of the Special Commissioner of the Daily News / J.A. MacGahan ; with an introduction and Mr. Schuyler's preliminary report.

  • MacGahan, J. A. (Januarius Aloysius), 1844-1878.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria : letters of the Special Commissioner of the Daily News / J.A. MacGahan ; with an introduction and Mr. Schuyler's preliminary report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    spondent were published, amplifying details of the atrocities and extending their area. In the same correspondence were incorporated several columns of letters from towns and villages in Bulgaria, describing murders and the vilest outrages with a most impressive distinctness. It may be affirmed without hesitation that no letters dealing with facts of a painful character were ever published which bore such evident marks of the scrupulous care of their author, and liis anxiety in deciding between vague reports and ascertained facts. But while these letters arrested the attention of the public, and excited a desire for fuller information, in official quarters they met with a far different reception. That the statements contained in them should be encountered with a certain degree of scepticism is a fact creditable to humanity, and if it had been objected to them that they were such as could not be received without corroboration, there would have been nothing to complain of. But counter-statements were made professing to be based upon more accurate knowledge. The Turkish Govern- ment met the case boldly, and by its foreign ministers de- nounced the Constantinople correspondence of the Daily News as monstrous exaggerations. The English Government, which ought to have been in possession of authentic information from Constantinople, could only say that the reports of the Daily News were without official confirmation, while by a certain portion of the press the disclosures of Turkish atrocities were described as sensational and unworthy of notice. It was in these circumstances that a further and wholly in- dependent inquiry into the events in Bulgaria was deemed necessary, if the light which had been kindled by the Corre- spondent of the Daily Neivs at Constantinople was not to be suffered to be extinguished. The special inquiry conducted by Mr. MacGahan, and of which the following letters are the result, was rendered necessary by the evident want of information on the part of the English Government. The first time that Sir Henry Elliot mentioned the atrocities in Bulgaria in his correspondence with the Foreign Office, appears to have been on the 19th of