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| Photo of Armenians killed in Erzerum taken in November 1895 by William Sachtleben. |
Cortland Evening Standard, Tuesday,
December 10, 1895.
ERZEROUM MASSACRE.
Further
Details of the Recent Butchery.
SIGNIFICANT
INCIDENTS NOTED.
Slaughter
and Pillage Almost Entirely the Work of the Regular Soldiers.
Unarmed
Armenians Shot or Sabered as They Fled for Safety.
BOSTON, Dec. 10.—Late cable advices call attention
to certain things particularly to be noticed in reference to the horrible massacre at Erzeroum on Wednesday, Oct. 30.
The massacre was the work of the regular
soldiers, assisted only to a limited extent by the populace. It was accompanied
by a systematic plundering of both houses and shops, for the most part by the
soldiers.
The attack on individuals was with intent to
kill, which is shown by the large number of killed as compared with the wounded.
It began at the same moment all over the city, about 12:30 p. m., and stopped
at about 4:30 p. m.
The Armenians were all in their places of
business without any preparation whatever for attack or defense. They were shot
or cut down like animals in a trap with little opportunity for resistance.
One of the soldiers who took part in the massacre
said: "At 4 o'clock a La Turka (which would be about 9 o'clock a. m.) the
bugle sounded and we fell in. We were told to sharpen our swords and to get our
arms in order for use. About 7 o'clock the bugle sounded and again we fell in.
Then we were told that we were going to war with the Armenians; that they had
risen in rebellion and had attacked the government house. We were marched out
and told to attack the houses. We attacked, but saw no enemy. Whenever a poor
Armenian was seen running away we were ordered to fire and we simply shot down
or sabered those who were fleeing for safety. We broke into the houses and
plundered them."
The massacre began the moment the noon hour
of prayer was finished and simultaneously all over the city. It began with the
bugle call to fire. It ended with the bugle call to cease firing about four hours
later.
The soldiery in all parts of the city had the
affair in hand. In fact, in some places not many civilians appeared in the
looting parties. A credible witness saw the looting of two houses. A crowd of
soldiers with full equipment of arms came near the house. They fired in various
directions. Then they fired a volley into the house and crowded around the door
and battered it down. The crowd of soldiers rushed in and carried off everything.
The merchants in one shop had only time to
escape to the cellar. Soon a crowd entered, made up of soldiers and two or three
Kurds. The shop was looted and the safe broken open, the gold liras falling out
on the floor. The Kurds immediately tried to get their share. The captain in charge
prevented and an altercation began, when the captain drew his revolver and shot
one of the Kurds and then seized the money.
Many men hid in the cellars of their shops,
and being discovered in the process of the looting, were cut to pieces without mercy.
Few escaped with a single bullet wound or with a single sword thrust.
It is estimated that there are between 2,000
and 2,500 Armenian houses in Erzeroum. Half of them have been plundered of all
their contents. The number of Armenian shops would almost if not quite equal
the number of the houses. There are less than 100 shops remaining intact.
There were 1,000 victims of the massacre,
1,000 houses plundered and the inmates left without food, fuel, bedding or winter
clothing; 2,000 shops plundered and closed and the business of the city brought
to a standstill. Half of the Christian population will probably have reserve enough
to live on; the remainder will be reduced to the greatest straits.
The massacre was in the hands of two notorious
Sassoun "butchers," Colonels Ismail Bey and Tewfik Bey. What relation
Shakir Pasha has to the event is not clear.
Said
Pasha Returns Home.
CONSTANTINOPLE, Dec. 10.—Rusthuk Said
Pasha, who has been a refugee at the British embassy, has returned to his own residence.
Hudson
Navigation Closing.
KINGSTON, N. Y., Dec. 10.—Navigation is
rapidly drawing to a close in the upper Hudson. There is now much floating ice,
making boating dangerous and unprofitable.
HUDSON RIVER
CLOSED.
Ice Has
Formed Several Weeks Earlier than Usual.
NEWBURG, N. Y., Dec. 10.—Navigation on the
upper Hudson is closed for the season. The ice is heavy as far south as Hudson
and from Hudson to Rondout is sufficiently heavy to interfere with the
movements of the boats.
Navigation
of the upper Hudson has closed several weeks earlier than usual. Fords and
lakes are all frozen over.
WATERS'
PLACE SOLD
At
Mortgage Forclosure Sale. Bid in For $3,875.
The residence of the late Merton M. Waters,
Esq., 20 West Court-st., was this
morning sold by Referee Edwin Duffey at mortgage foreclosure sale at the front
door of the courthouse. The plaintiffs to the sale were Almond H. Sanders and
Katharine C. Ver Nooy as administrators with will annexed of the estate of the
late Hiram Crandall. The mortgages and costs in the case amounted to $3,905.56.
Only about twenty gentlemen were present,
including lawyers who had been associated with Mr. Waters in practice here and
who were there with only a friendly interest, real estate dealers who wanted to
be on hand if there was the prospect of a dollar in the place for them, and
some others who were financially interested in the sale for one reason or
another.
The referee announced that the place included
the lot which was three-quarters of an acre in size with a frontage of one
hundred feet, and the large home and barn upon the premises. The bidding was
started by the plaintiff with an offer of $3,700. There was but one other
bidder, Judge S. S. Knox, who raised the bid $50. The plaintiff bid $3,800.
Judge Knox offered another $30, and the plaintiff finally put in a bid of
$3,875. There was a long delay waiting for other offers, during which time is
was stated by several parties that the place was easily worth $5,000, but no
one seemed disposed to back up that assertion by a bid. One gentleman replied to
a question, as to why he didn't secure it at this beggarly figure, that he had
lost money on the last election. The referee finally struck off the place to the
plaintiff, and the company dispersed.
There is no question but that this is a cheap
piece of property well located, but no one seems to care to invest a cent in
real estate in these times.
"Derby
Mascot" To-night.
Katie Rooney in the "Derby Mascot'' appears
at the Opera House to-night. The
Worcester Spy says:
Katie Rooney, in the "Derby
Mascot," a play replete with much entertaining detail, opened a week's
engagement at Lothrop's opera house, Monday evening. The house was packed to
the door with an audience lavish in its applause of the many specialties and
novel climaxes. Katie Rooney, of course, was the central figure in the piece,
and was as full of piquancy and versatility as a nut is full of kernel. She is
thoroughly original in her manner of acting and one can see cropping out
frequently the characteristics of her diseased father, Patrick Rooney.
The play opens with the Derby race track
scene, and introduces two live horses in a realistic racing scene. Incidental
to the first act, a trick grizzly bear performs novelly [sic], and specialties
of contortion, songs and buck and wing dancing all fill in entertainingly.
The scenery throughout the play is special
and adds to the general realism.
Manager Rood this morning received the
following telegram from the manager of the Norwich opera house where this
company showed last night: "'Derby Mascot' gave general satisfaction here.
Large and appreciative audience."
DEPARTMENT OF GOOD GOVERNMENT.
STEADILY
ONWARD.
At no time since the present Good Government
movement began in Cortland have its leaders expected that their work would be
quickly or easily done. At no time have they been very exultant. They are not a set of temperance fanatics
intent on riding their hobby for the pleasure of it. They are citizens of well
established character and influence, who take a practical view of things and believe
that the laws of the state and the ordinances of this village can be and ought
to be enforced in the interests of morals, decency and good government. They
believe that the bold disregard for law, the drunkenness, licentiousness and
other vices that have prevailed in our community, are too deplorable to be allowed
to go on undisturbed and unrestricted. They know that this state of affairs has
so long existed that a large number of our people have been led into bad habits
and bad lives, and help to support the saloons, gambling places and houses of
shame. It has been wisdom for the Good Government people to go slow and expect
to gain the moral support of the community at large only by a steadily onward
movement. This is their policy. They will take no backward step. They have thus
far done well. The outlook is encouraging. We ask those of our friends who are
anxious for more vigorous measures to be patient. We ask those who had become hopeless
of any better state of affairs to come fully up to the help of those who are
doing the hard work of this reform. In a few days we will publish the visible results
of the work as thus far done.
A NATIONAL REFORM CONVENTION.
A great convention in the interest of civil
reform will be held this week in Baltimore.
The following words are from the call issued for the meeting:
"Recent
revelations of municipal iniquities have astonished the world. Many officers of
the law are accomplices of criminals.
Few, if any, of our cities are free from these developments of
political corruption. Other departments of government are also infected.
Bribery vitiates the purity of elections and purchases legislation from
lawmakers Both the state and the national government are in league with the
liquor traffic. We license it for the revenue it yields, and fill our
treasuries with the price of blood. We have deeply corrupted the family. More
than twenty-five thousand divorces are granted every year in the United States,
most of them on insufficient grounds; and both of these unlawful separations
and the adulterous marriages which follow them, the state assumes
responsibility for placing upon them the sanction of the law. Laws for the
protection of the Sabbath and for the suppression of blasphemy are openly and
shamelessly violated. In many cities, and in some whole states, the Word of God
has been banished from the public schools, and a purely secular plan of
education adopted. These facts are not denied. They are known of all
intelligent men. They demand the zealous consideration of all Christian patriots, and earnest and united action."
FIGURES TELL.
Some of those who so bitterly oppose Theodore
Roosevelt's work in New York have been claiming that while his police have been
watching saloons keenly other crimes in that city have grown space. To offset
that, and make its falsehood conspicuous, Mr. Roosevelt shows that while for
the preceding five months 763 felonies, for which no arrests were made, were
reported, for the same period the year before there were 1,014 such cases, or a
reduction of about 25 per cent. He declares also that while in the five months
of 1894 the whole number of arrests was 42,000, in 1895 in the corresponding period
the arrests were 51,000, which makes it clear that all the energies of the
police were not spent in shutting Sunday saloons. These haters of law-keeping
will have to try a new dodge.—The State.
Two Cakes
For Buffalo.
Two elegantly decorated cakes were shipped
to Buffalo from Mark's bakery yesterday. One was a monster spongy angel food
cake 32 inches in circumference, beautifully decorated with letters on top in
white and pink, "Buffalo Florist Club." The other cake was a large
square fig layer cake decorated in pink and white letters, "Good Luck, B.
F. C." These cakes were made as a special order from George Eckerd,
florist, of Buffalo. Mr. and Mrs. Eckerd entertain the Buffalo Florist club
this evening.
BREVITIES.
—The Ancient Order of Hibernians will give a
grand ball on New Year's eve at Taylor hall.
—The hedge on the north side of the Normal
campus has been removed and will soon be replaced by an iron fence.
—New advertisements to-day are—F. Daehler,
page 7; Baker & Angel, page 4; Young People Grace church, page 5.
—"Ike" Finn, the cabman, says that
this is the dullest season for cab business which he has known in eleven years'
experience in Cortland. [Perhaps the new trolley service had an impact—CC editor.]
—The United Express company is running a
sleigh owing to the demolishment of a wagon wheel at the Cortland House corner
yesterday,
—The case of Furber vs. W. J. Moore, coroner,
which was set down for 10 o'clock this morning before Justice T. H. Dowd was
adjourned until Thursday, Dec. 12.
—The village board of trustees held a meeting
yesterday afternoon in the office of Dr. F. W. Higgins, president of the board,
and voted to extend the bond of Collector W. S. Hoxie twenty days from Dec. 10.
No other business was transacted.
—The D. L. & W. R. R. had a $30,000 freight
wreck at Bath at 2 o'clock this morning. A wild cat freight crashed into the
rear end of a regular freight which had stopped for water. Five men jumped from
the two trains in time to save their lives, so that no one was hurt.
—The Epworth league of Homer-ave. M. E.
church has furnished the Young Men's Christian association with a year's subscription
of the Epworth Herald. The Herald
is now upon one of the tables of the reading room. The league has many thanks
from the association.
—Could some one of our subscribers furnish
us at once the authentic date of the building of the old block on Main-st. occupied
so many years by Dickinson & McGraw and finally demolished to permit the
opening of Railroad-st. We have occasion to use this to-morrow morning in one
of the last forms of our Industrial Edition.
—The examination in the matter of The People
against Patrick Tobin charged with grand larceny was begun before Justice
Thomas H. Dowd yesterday. Two witnesses were sworn and an adjournment taken to
Thursday at 9 o'clock A. M. Fred Hatch represented The People and John
Courtney, Jr., the defendant.
—An error in the use of a name in yesterday's
statement of the confirmation of the report of the commissioners in the matter
of the Randall land conveyed a false impression. The statement was made that
Attorney Palmer made a request for an extra allowance for costs which was granted.
As a matter of fact the request for extra costs came from Attorney Courtney,
representing Mr. Randall and his request was granted awarding $112.80 in addition
to the costs allowed him by the statute.
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