The Father of Investigative Journalism
I have no military heroes. Kings and queens are not housed in my pantheons. Perhaps a few mathematicians or scientists, and plenty of thinkers,political philosophers, people who have fought the evils of society and defended the weak. Some politicians. Lincoln, Gandhi, Tony Benn, Wilberforce, but not too many. At the top of my list you would find W.T.Stead.
He bought a young 13 year-old girl destined to become a child prostitute for £5. Eliza Armstrong. Dear reader do not stop reading. He did go to jail for this. Three whole months. Keep reading, you will end up loving him too. (In later years he would celebrate his incarceration every Nov.10, by wearing his prison uniform, which he bought)
He was the man, who, if he did not invent investigative journalism, at least redefined its boundaries. On becoming the editor of The Pall Mall Gazette he made campaign journalism one of its mainstays.
It was in the 1890’s. Britain was a country where the big majority was living in abject poverty. Crime was rife, vice was rampant, drunkenness was uncontrolled, and apart from a handful of social reformers, nobody had demonstrated any intention of changing this. Politicians were more or less all from the aristocratic class, and they saw no need to upset the social order and sacrifice their positions. Most people in work were earning a pittance and those out of work were starving. This encouraged theft and thuggery, drunkenness, gambling. Pickpockets mingled with the crowd everywhere.
Prostitution was inevitable. Often widowed women had no alternative once they lost their breadwinner. On the other hand, there was a class of people with more money than they knew what to do. They too indulged in vice, but they drank in bars and clubs. They gambled in the betting houses that were all over London. But above all, they wanted sex, and for those in the money, it was readily available. However, after they had had their fill of the normal run of available pleasures, they wanted to extend the barriers of depravity. This was when a market in underage boys and girls began to develop. Before 1885, the age of consent was 13, which meant that the police often turned a blind eye on girls of 11 or 12 being pushed into the trade by ruthless exploiters. It was easy to bribe an official at Somerset House to get a certificate showing an eleven-year old girl to be 13.
The Housing of the Working Classes Act 1885
There were groups of people fighting this, usually from the church. Stead was a religious man, a Quaker, but no bible-thumper he. One of his first targets was slum housing. His writings shocked many people and were influential in the passing of the housing act.
He campaigned relentlessly on the many issues, often creating the awareness necessary to prod the legislators to bring in new laws. He is, however, best known for the work he did relating to prostitution, including
The Contagious Diseases Act 1864.
One of his greatest allies was the ferocious campaigner Josephine Butler, who had the assistance of Elizabeth Wostenholme. Stead softened his readership with his tirades against one of the worst laws passed, of the sort where the victim is subjected to the full force of punitive laws. The legislation was at the instigation of the War Office and the Admiralty. Stead hated prostitution but not prostitutes. He understood that the huge majority among them had only the choice of starvation and allowing themselves and their children to starve. The law permitted the arrest of women suspected of being prostitutes and submit them to forcible checks for venereal disease, and to intern them in “locked” hospitals until they recovered. It was a law passed for men at the expense of women. Its stated purpose was to stop men catching venereal diseases. They were never tested, and found themselves at liberty to contaminate other women, prostitutes or wives. In 1869, with the women travelling across the country campaigning, and a few journalists providing whatever help they could, this law was repealed.
Child Prostitution, Eliza Armstrong etc…
A not uncommon practice among the depraved rich, was to buy a young virgin 11, 12 or 13 year old “virgin” for under £10, and deflower them. Afterwards they would be despatched to brothels, in London, Paris or Brussels. Some of the men had elaborated the means of perpetrating sadistic sex on their victims. To be left in peace to indulge, there were padded rooms available where no amount of crying would alert nosy neighbours. When Stead got to hear about this, he decided to investigate. He quickly verified that things like that were pretty common. That was when, with the help of Miss Josephine Butler, he decided to “buy” a little girl, Eliza Armstrong.
The Maiden Tribute of Babylon.
Thus it was that with one or two helpers he approached the mother of Eliza, and she agreed to part with her daughter for £5.00. The girl was whisked off to the continent by Bramwell Booth, the brother of the founder of the Salvation Army, to be cared for by them, pending her placement as a servant or seamstress. Stead now had enough material for an aggressive campaign in the Pall Mall Gazette. The Maiden Tribute of Babylon created the biggest stir in
the history of journalism. W.H. Smith’s, the biggest distributor of newspapers took one look at the paper and decided to ban it from its stalls. However, the people who saw the first article were stunned, and this led to a stampede. Everybody wanted their own copy, and the papers were sold out in hours. Many people bought theirs at hundred times the issue price. As a result, the supine Sir William Harcourt decided to re-organise the police force, and parliament passed a law increasing the age of consent to 16 years.
Jail Sentence.
Stead had obviously made enemies, and someone decided to make him pay. A police investigation ensued and it was discovered that when he bought Eliza, he had not got her father’s permission. He was sent down for three months.
The Titanic.
Stead’s reputation suffered an initial setback when he went to prison, but he continued his good work, and established himself as a master of his craft. It was because of the high esteem he was held in that he was invited as a guest on the Titanic’s maiden voyage.
