DISTURBANCES IN CONSTANTINOPLE.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 108, 5 October 1874, Page 3

DISTURBANCES IN CONSTANTINOPLE.

From the Pall Mall Gazette .

Some serious disturbances have lately occurred in Constantinople arising from the superstition prevalent among the lower class of Greeks that Jews are in the habit of kidnapping Christian children for the purpose of killing them and using their blood in religious ceremonies. The other day a little boy, aged eight years, the son of poor Greek parents in the Phanar, disappeared, and unfortunately his body was, on the 2nd July, washed ashore near the house of a wealthy jeweller on the Golden Horn, close by Balata. The boy had been seen flying his kite near the jeweller’s house on the morning of the day on which he was missed, and certain contusions and wounds on his body, proprobably caused by its floating about in the water for two days, gave rise to a popular impression that he had been killed by the Jews for sacrificial purposes. A large body of people from the Phanar accordingly besieged the jeweller’s house, and created such a tumult that the police had to interfere, and the mob was only appeased by an assurance that a medical examination should be made of the body and a strict inquiry at once instituted. It was hoped that this would allay the excitement, but on the morning of the sth inst further [riots occurred. The Jews of Balata were were attacked by the lower class of the population of the Phanar. Numbers were wounded on both sides. The Minister of Police had to proceed to the spot in person with a large force of mounted gendarmerie, and order was only restored with considerable difficulty. Since then the disturbences have broken out afresh in various parts of the city. At Galata, and along the Golden Horn, the Greek sailors have fallen upon all the Jews within their reach, and seriously maltreated them. Fighting has also been going on between the Greeks and Jews at Hasskeni, and even in Pera several assaults have been committed. Strong bodies of police have constantly patrolled the suburbs of Phanar and Balata, and the cafes and publichouses have been closed. A fierce fight took place on the 6th July between the Greek and Jew boys employed in the tobacco factory of the Regie at Stamboul, and altogether the accidental drowning of this Greek child had created a sensation in Constantinople quite incomprehensible to Londoners, who are constantly being sacrificed by Christian murderers, and whose bodies are flung into the Regent’s Canal without any fuss being made in the matter.