William Nosworthy Churchill

William Nosworthy Churchill (1796-1846) was a British-born journalist who moved to Turkey aged 19 and was founder of the Ceride-i Havadis newspaper. He was the cause of a diplomatic incident which resulted in temporary severance of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire.

He was born in London on 7 November 1796, the son of Frederick Henry Churchill (1759-1840) of Exeter and Dorothy (neé Nosworthy) (1768-1846) of Crediton, Devon.

In 1815 aged 19 he went to Turkey, possibly as a foreign correspondent of the English Morning Herald newspaper, and settled in Smyrna (İzmir). In 1824 he married Beatrix Belhomme (1803-1895) daughter of a French merchant, with whom he had 11 children including Alfred Black (1826-1870), Henry Adrian (1828 -1886) explorer and diplomat, and William an artist.

He later moved to Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) where he was known as a wood merchant.

He worked as a dragoman (interpreter) at the US Consulate and in 1831 was appointed American Vice-Consul, then in 1833 was Acting Consul and then recommended to be Consul following the resignation of the former incumbent, but he was not appointed and in April 1834 he was dismissed and instructed to hand over the Consulate archives and the balance of funds in his hands. Churchill stated that he had been defamed by a known perpetrator, and asked the American President for an inquiry.

In 1836 while hunting in Kadıköy, a large residential district of Constantinople, he accidentally shot and wounded the son of Necati Efendi, a civil servant holding a high position in the Title Deed Office. Churchill was arrested, savagely beaten, and imprisoned while the boy's injuries were being assessed. His eventual release obtained through the intervention of the British Ambassador Lord Ponsonby caused a diplomatic incident resulting in the dismissal of Akif Pasha, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and temporary severance of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire. In compensation for his detention Churchill was handsomely compensated with an award of the Nişan-i İftihar (Order of Glory, the second highest decoration in the Ottoman Empire), a settlement of 400,000 piastres (then a very substantial sum), and trade concessions including the export of ten thousand Ottoman gallons of olive oil.

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