Dr. Eleftheria Daleziou will deliver a lecture entitled “Dorothy Horrax Sutton – An American Near East Relief Worker in the service of the orphans in Turkey and Greece (1920-1926)”.
The presentation will be in English.

Dr. Eleftheria Daleziou is a historian and trained archivist. She received an M.Phil and a Ph.D. in Modern History from the University of Glasgow, UK and she holds an MSc. in Archives and Records Management from the University of Dundee, UK. She is currently employed as Reference Archivist at the Gennadius Library Archives of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Her current research interests lie with the activities of British and American philanthropic organizations in Greece during the interwar period.

Dorothy Horrax Sutton (1878-1970), an American kindergarten teacher, joined the Near East Relief in October 1920. She worked first at the headquarters of NER in Constantinople and in April 1921 was sent to the Caucasus to work with Armenian orphans. Following her experience with orphans in the Caucasus region she was assigned the post of the director at the NER orphanage at Ismid up to June 1922. After a short break in the States, Sutton returned in the region in December 1922. In the meantime, the disastrous end of the Greek-Turkish War in Asia Minor had led to the evacuation of approximately 15,000 children from NER orphanages into Greece. The ensuing influx of refugees in Greece and the exchange of populations had only worsened the humanitarian crisis in the region. Sutton was first assigned the directorship of the NER orphanage at Loutraki, following she went to the island of Cephalonia and then joined the personnel of the NER Syra orphanage. Her last post was in Salonica where Sutton became the Director of the Child Welfare Bureau with jurisdiction extending over camps in Macedonia and Thrace. She occupied the post until 1926. Sutton was decorated by NER shortly after her return with the Distinguished Service Medal of the Near East Relief and by the Greek King George with the Croix of St. Zaviere, in recognition of her work in directing the rehabilitation of the Greek refugees.

The presentation draws its material primarily from the personal correspondence of Dorothy Horrax Sutton, her letters to her family, during her period of service with the NER. The material was donated to the Archives of the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens by Sutton’s sister Alice B. Schell in 1984.