Portrait | Julius Michael Millingen (1800-1878)

When the London Philhellenic Committee was formed, Millingen was recommended to it by William Smith, and on 27 August 1823 he left England for Corfu, with letters of introduction to the Greek government and to Lord Byron. Arriving at Asos in Cephalonia in November of that year, he found Byron at Metaxata, and spent some time with him there. He later accompanied him to Missolonghi, and attended him in his last illness, which, at the autopsy, Millingen pronounced to be purulent meningitis He was accused by Francesco Bruno, another of Byron's doctors, in an article in the Westminster Review, with having caused his death by delaying phlebotomy. Millingen replied at length in his Memoirs. A modern view is that both doctors were culpable in Byron's death, for their use of bleeding.

Soon after Byron's death in 1824, Millingen had a severe attack of typhoid fever; on recovering he was appointed surgeon in the Greek army, in which he served until its surrender to the Turks.On 31 March 1825, he was appointed surgeon of the Neokastro garrison which at the time was undergoing a siege by Egyptian troops. He was taken prisoner by Ibrahim Pasha, and released only after representations by Stratford Canning, then British ambassador to the Sublime Porte. In November 1826 Millingen went to Smyrna, and after a short stay in Kutahya and Broussa(Bursa), settled in 1827 in Constantinople. There he attained a reputation as a physician.

Millingen was also court physician to Mahmud II and his four successors as Sultan; he was one of a commission appointed to inquire into the death of Sultan Abdulaziz. He was also a member of the International Medical Congress on Cholera held in Constantinople in 1866, and an original member and afterwards president of the General Society of Medicine. In 1860 David Urquhart set up a Turkish bath in London, as Millingen had advocated.

Like his father, Millingen was an archæologist. For many years he was president of the Greek Syllogos or Literary Society of Constantinople, where he lectured in Greek on archæological subjects. He discovered the ruins of Aczani in Phrygia, an account of which was published by George Thomas Keppel, and excavated the site of the temple of Jupiter Urius on the Bosphorus.

In a major fire at Pera in 1870, Millingen lost most of his belongings, and a manuscript biography of Byron. He died in Constantinople on 1 December 1878.

Works

Memoirs of the Affairs of Greece, with Anecdotes relating to Lord Byron, London, 1831, vol. i. only (vol. ii. remained in manuscript). Its publication involved him in controversy with Edward John Trelawny.

Arbitrary Detention by the Inquisition at Rome of three Protestant Children in Defiance of the Will of their Father, London, 1842.

He also contributed an article in French on "Oriental Baths" to the Gazette Médicale d'Orient, 1 January 1858.

Family

 took the name Melek Hanum. She was divorced by her second husband, and wrote an autobiography, Thirty Years in the Harem (1872).

The children of the first marriage included:

A daughter, Evelin or Evelina[2] (1831–1900), who married Count Alvaro Pisani. Henry James wrote in a letter that she "makes one believe in the romantic heroines of D'Israeli and Bulwer".

Frederick Millingen[3](1833/34–c.1901), the second son, took the name Osman Bey and joined the Ottoman army; and later called himself Vladimir Andrejevitch. He was in the Ottoman service 1853 to 1864, but clashed with Fuad Pasha.

James R. van Millingen (Constantinople, 1835; id. 1876), who became the Director of Ottoman Telegraphs

The children of the second marriage to Zafira van Millingen (Ralli) (b.July 19, 1814 - d. July 23, 1843)  included:

Alexander van Millingen (1840–1915), the third son.

Charles [van] Millingen (Constantinople, 1842 – Tehran, 1880) and John [van] Millingen (Constantinople, 1842 – 1844), twin brothers

The children of the third marriage to Adelaide van Millingen (La Fontaine) (b.July 19, 1819 - d. 1893 (73-74) Daughter of James La Fontaine and Niccoleta La Fontaine (Coccini) included:

Julius Robertson van Millingen (Constantinople, 22 November 1848 – Dunblane, Scotland, 16 November 1940)

Edwin [van] Millingen (Constantinople, 30 April 1850 – Constantinople, 7 April 1900), who was an oculist in Eastern Europe.

[1] Melek Hanum (1814–1873) met Kibrisli Mehemet (Mehmed) Pasha, in Paris, and they were married upon returning to Istanbul. She accompanied him to various postings in Palestine and Serbia and shared with him the frustrations of the arbitrary periodic dismissals that characterized late Ottoman politics. Her sensationalist account of life in Turkey contains details of political intrigue and corruption and demonstrates the influence and mobility available to women in the official households of the Ottoman elite. 

During Mehmed Pasha’s absence, Melek Hanim concocted a plan to replace her sickly son with another child in the event of his expected death. Although her own son survived, one of her co-conspirators killed another, and the ensuing scandal resulted in her divorce. She spent the rest of her life trying to exact vengeance upon her ex-husband and attempting to gain access to the property she viewed as legitimately her own. After several setbacks, she and two of her children finally fled to Paris. Thirty Years in the Harem was written during her impoverished exile there, and is highly critical of Islam and of Ottoman society. Her vitriolic account is seen by some as proof of Ottoman women’s political influence, and by others as self-serving and scandalous.

[2]Evelina van Millingen (4 April 1831 — 25 June 1900), also known as Evelina Millingen and later as Evelina, Countess Pisani, was an Englishwoman born in Constantinople, and known as a hostess, a cultivator of gardens, and a novelist, based in northern Italy.

Evelina van Millingen was born in Constantinople, the eldest child of Julius Michael Millingen and his first wife, Marie Dejean Millingen (a Frenchwoman later called "Melek Hanum"). Her younger brother was Byzantine scholar Alexander van Millingen. Her father was an English-born doctor who attended Lord Byron on his deathbed at Missolonghi. Evelina was raised mainly in her grandmother's household in Rome. Strong disagreement over Evelina's and her brothers' educational placements and religious upbringing precipitated their parents' divorce.

Upon assuming her role as countess at the Villa Pisani in 1852, Evelina focused on creating extensive formal gardens on the grounds of the villa in Vescovana. Her gardens reflected her English and her Turkish influences. She also commissioned the family chapel on the grounds, built in 1860 and designed by sculptor Antonio Gradenigo. She hosted international travelers at the villa,  including Henry James and Augusta, Lady Gregory.

Evelina van Millingen married Count Almorò III Pisani in 1852, in Venice. She was widowed when he died in 1886, and, because they were childless, the Pisani family of Santo Stefano ended with his death. Evelina, the last Countess Pisani, died in the summer of 1900, aged 68 years, in Italy. The family's former villa in Vescovana, now an inn, encourages visitors to look and listen for Evelina's ghost haunting her gardens.  An event every spring, "I Bulbi di Evelina Pisani", celebrates the blooming of her tulip gardens.

[3] Frederick Millingen, aliases (Major) Osman Bey and (Major) Vladimir Andrejevich, went by many names, but spent much of his life obsessed by a single idea. Born in 1832 in Istanbul, Millingen’s career included a brief stint as an Ottoman officer and a would-be Union soldier who sailed to New York in 1865 to help win the Civil War, arriving too late to be of use.

Upon his return to Europe, Millingen’s interests soon shifted to global Jewry. His 1873 La conquête du monde par les Juifs (The Conquest of the World by the Jews) was an international hit, appearing in numerous languages and even crossing the Atlantic thanks to a St. Louis publisher. (1878 U.S. edition )

Yet according to his memoirs, the book brought its author nothing but misfortune. In a 1900 pamphlet entitled Dreyfus, martyr Juif (Dreyfus, Jewish Martyr), which he signed “Osman-bey, martyr of the Jews,” Millingen describes being hounded across Europe by a transnational cabal of “Judeo-nihilists” and their allies, including his own sister. He concludes by tallying up his expulsions (including one and a half from Italy) and pronouncing himself “the most expelled man of the 19th century.”