NY Times Oct 23, 1912:
"The Czarowitch Alexis is lying rather seriously ill at the imperial hunting lodge of Spala, Russian Poland as the result of an accident on Oct. 15".
October 15 new style is October 2 old style... the date of Alexei's carriage ride. Â Occurring October 15 N/S and reported in New York on October 23 N/S... a delay of eight days.
NY Times Oct 25, 1912:
"His Imperial Highness is now suffering from peritonitis. Â It is impossible to ascertain the real cause of his illness."
When I ran across a whole series of articles on the crisis at Spala a few years ago while looking up sources on Alexei Nikolaevich, I did realize that Spala was located in an isolated area in Poland, and that at first the usual hesitation to have much about their son revealed would have been typical of the Imperial parents. Â When the news filtered out of this rustic royal vacation retreat, a lot of rumors as to the cause of the boy's apparent
injuries flew. Â He had been said to have been shot and wounded on the Standart, to have been maimed by an anarchist's bombs, to have jumped off a high cupboard, and to have fallen off a horse. Â There was not anything about the boy's illness flying about in the press in the wake of the Spala incident until the effort to deny that the boy had hemophilia was started by that official court bulletin composed by Count Fredericks.
October 25 new style is October 12 old style, and here the NY Times is reporting peritonitis when we now know that Alexei was already two days into his recovery after the fever had broken on October 10 O/S.. October 23rd N/S ... showing us again how much of a delay there was between the date of the actual events and the transmission of the story to New York
NY Times Oct. 26, 1912:
"The secrecy with respect to the injuries from which the Crown Prince is suffering has bred a crop of sensational rumors."
.. and it still is a sensational rumour to this very day.
As the articles written in the New York Times and in the London Times show, the wildest rumors were NOT about Alexei's illness, but about the cause of the incident.
NY Times Nov 9, 1912:
"The medical publication Hospital commenting on the recent pronouncement of the Czar's physicians that the Czarevich has hemophilia says the malady was frequently observed by scientists among European Royal families in the early and middle ages"
We've all seen the "recent pronouncement of the Czar's physicians" that the New York Times was referring to in its report of Nov 9, 1912. Â It's the very same pronouncement that was issued by the Minister of the Imperial Court Baron Fredericks just six days before that New York Times report... on October 21 of 1912 O/S.. November 3 N/S... that carries the names of the four doctors Raukhfus, Federov, Botkin, and Ostrogorsky...
...and we all know that the "pronouncement of the Czar's physicians" most definitely does *NOT* use the word "haemophilia". Â However, it does use the words "significant anemia" which is not the same thing. Â (For our readers who have a hardback copy of "A Lifelong Passion" handy, the "pronouncement" that the New York Times was reporting can be found in the chapter on the year 1912 on pages 359 and 360.)
Put yourself in the shoes of the Marshal of the Russian Court at this time.  The young Tsarevich had elicited the sympathy of the entire nation and there had apparently been 'a pronouncement of the Czar's physicians' that the boy had hemophilia.  The state secret had been leaked!  How to deny this and quell this news?  He had to write a bulletin in order to convince the Russian people that the boy would be all right, and had to hedge around the child's illness.  That 'significant anemia' he mentions?  He explained that it resulted from an 'abdominal haemorrhage....' that,  'as can be seen from  the specialist literature....' took 'a very specific and extremely severe clinical form.'
That form according to the fragment of Alexei's medical record that actually did come from his doctors, was that of a
haematoma retroperitonale -- that manifested itself in bleeding into the hip joint, inflammation of the OUTER peritoneum, flexing of the knee joint and the high fever due to the 'absorption of excess blood...' and 'the reactive inflammatory process'.
I could go to great length to explain to how the fledgling News Wire Services operated in the early days of the past century, many long decades before the advent of satellites and the internet... tell you in detail how news stories are edited in bunches as they move from one major news bureau to the next and are sent to the customer newspapers at regularly scheduled intervals every day. Â I could also explain how newspaper stories are written and edited to attract the readers' attention while at the same time maintaining brevity for reasons of limited space on the page...
In 1912? Â Maybe the delay can be explained because of the remote location, the reluctance of Nicholas and Alexandra to reveal too much until Alexei Nikolaevich's condition became too grave not to say something, and the necessity to translate from the Russian or the German.
... but you'll doubtless go to great efforts to try shooting that down too... so I won't bother.
JK
