The Charity Market and Humanitarianism in Britain, 1870-1912 by Sarah Roddy Julie-Marie Strange Bertrand Taithe

Author:Sarah Roddy,Julie-Marie Strange,Bertrand Taithe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

The politics of humanitarian fundraising

Stafford House Committee’s political agenda was intertwined with commercial and class interests that aligned private and public good, geopolitical perspectives and imperialism. The period 1877–78 might be seen as the apex of this alignment and the greatest enterprise in the Stafford House Committee work. The negotiations towards the peace treaty of Berlin brought the Russo-Turkish War to a close and ended the Stafford House fundraising activities. The decision to end the fund’s presence in Turkey, made by the Committee in London, was sent by telegram on 22 March 1878. Kennett-Barrington closed the accounts in July 1878 just as the peace treaty was signed.80 The remaining funds were transferred to help refugees in Constantinople and Kennett-Barrington expressed his concerns regarding the fate of the wounded still in the care of the Committee’s hospitals. There were no obvious structures to which they could easily be transferred. The decision to withdraw from Turkey also highlighted the drying up of funds. The final attempts to raise funds, such as the concert in July 1878, merely facilitated the orderly withdrawal. The hospital in Gallipoli was already officially in Turkish hands on 21 June 1878,81 and by 15 July 1878 all equipment and resources of other hospitals were put in the hands of the Turkish military. The final fundraising of July 1878 was intended to prolong the Committee staff presence at the Gallipoli hospital for only another month. By then the Committee’s fund had completely run out and besides this last fundraising effort, so had its sense of purpose. Turkey’s military defeat ended the humanitarian campaign revealing how humanitarian work was subservient to the necessities of the conflict.

This ending reveals the meshing of politics and humanitarian work. The needs of civilians or, indeed, the many wounded soldiers still in the wards were known and acknowledged but as the war ended so did the urge to intervene to bolster one of the warring parties. Far from any notion of neutrality, the humanitarian fundraising of 1877–78 was explicitly partisan and framed by the context of a Turkish war effort against Russian invaders. While some journalists such as the Times correspondent at Erzeroum Captain Norman, W. T. Stead’s Northern Echo and the pioneering reporter at the Daily News Archibald Forbes clearly wrote in support of Russia, Algernon Borthwick, owner and editor of the Morning Post, used his newspaper as a platform for the defence of the Committee and its work.82 Even Sutherland, usually aloof, made his sympathies public. He received the controversial Colonel Valentine Baker (self-styled ‘Baker Pasha’), an officer of the Ottoman army and viewed by many in Clubland London as a hero despite his conviction for indecent assault in a railway carriage in 1874 for which he served a year in prison.83 Sutherland was much criticized in public and in parliament for his association with Baker and his endorsement of the Turkish cause. He nevertheless embraced the consequences of his political choices when in January 1878, some months before the cessation of hostilities,

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