What can the documents tell us about how the scheme was marketed?

Description:Newspaper cuttings in the scrapbooks include a variety of articles promoting the Stafford House Committee's work. These articles inform the reader about the suffering and hardship of the Turkish soldiers.

An article in The Morning Post dated Wednesday December 13th 1876, in which the original appeal featured reads:

‘The correspondents of the English press have universally borne testimony to the patience, sobriety and valour of these men, who in defence of their country, have proved themselves soldiers of which any nation might be proud’

The journalist reports that ‘they have, however, not only to face death, wounds and mutilation, but the rigours of an exceptionally severe climate’.

The reporter refers to the Turkish hospitals being ‘overcrowded’, a problem which he comments ‘deprive[s] the wounded of much of the care and aid that should be given to them.’

Following this, the writer appeals for donations to the Stafford House Committee’s fund, stating that ‘gifts of warm clothing and underclothing would therefore be invaluable’.

It is interesting that the reporter concludes that ‘the work is one of humanity, and worthy of a Christian people’.

Many newspapers advertised the Stafford House Committee's scheme in a context which appealed to a sense of English patriotism through benevolence. Another article in the Morning Post reads: ‘Our countrymen will indeed have changed their character if, when the need is brought before their notice, they do not hasten to do what they can to relieve it’.