To expose child prostitution, this London journalist actually bought a 13-year-old girl
His unethical reporting project did help raise the age of consent
In 1885, a London reporter arranged to sell a 13-year-old girl into sex slavery then convince everyone a man had raped her. The plan worked. Not only did he sell papers, the sensational story forced Parliament to raise the age of consent. Afterward, the girl was shipped off to France to work as a laundress.
William Thomas Stead was an aspiring “investigative reporter” with a hefty political agenda. When evidence didn’t go his way, he wrote copy around it; when he couldn’t catch a bad guy in the act, he insinuated his guilt anyway. He knew that sensational reportage could rock the vote, so to speak, and muckraked when it was most fashionable.
To his credit, one of Stead’s causes was the fight to end child prostitution, and the abuse and assault of minors via sex slavery. He was a member of the “Purity Campaign,” a late 19th-century movement against prostitution and other sex crimes deemed impure by Christian ideology. Catherine Booth, wife of the founder of the Salvation Army, had recruited him, eager to ally with an ambitious and moldable young journalist.
By this time, the House of Lords had failed three times to pass laws that would raise the age of consent from 13 to 16. Each time the Commons voted down the bills, ostensibly out of fear that older girls could more easily dress as adults to seduce and blackmail wealthy men. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of prostitutes lived and worked in London, many of them poor teenagers.
Stead was prepared to use his platform to take action.
He started by buying two girls for £10. But when he attempted to question them about their profession, they ran away. Stead moved on. He needed a sure bet.
Through his Salvation Army network of “fallen women,” he enlisted the help of Rebecca Jarrett, a former madam. Jarrett, under the pseudonym “Mrs. Sullivan,” invented a story that she and her wealthy husband needed a young servant girl to do the wash at their suburban estate. After Eliza Armstrong (called “Lily” in Stead’s article) appeared in her doorway, Jarrett approached Armstrong’s mother, a poor alcoholic and a victim of spousal abuse who cared for six children in a one-room apartment on Charles Street, and made an offer.
Though skeptical of the arrangement and Mrs. Sullivan’s credentials, Mrs. Armstrong eventually agreed to lease her daughter out as a maid. She expected weekly letters, and the promise she could see her again in one month. Mrs. Armstrong accepted £2 as down payment, with an additional £3 promised later.
Meanwhile, the young Armstrong was taken to a midwife and abortionist named Madame Louise Mourez. Before the plan could move any further, all agreed that the child should be a certified virgin. Mourez examined the girl, despite her repeated attempts to escape. Though Stead was not present for this portion, he later quoted the midwife: “‘The poor little thing,’…the hard-hearted old abortionist exclaimed…’She is so small, her pain will be extreme. I hope you will not be too cruel with her’ — as if to lust when fully aroused the very acme of agony on the part of the victim has not been a fierce delight.” She handed over a small bottle of chloroform: “This is the best. My clients find this much the most effective.”
Next, Armstrong was carted to the brothel itself, at 32 Poland Street in the West End. Stead was there, ordering liquor at the bar; he didn’t drink it, but figured it would lend credibility to his character. In the next room, Jarrett was attempting to drug Armstrong with the chloroform. The girl resisted each time, however. Finally, Jarrett gave up and left her to wait for her first client.
When Stead entered the room, he was surprised to find the child sitting up and alert with terror, not unconscious according to plan. She uttered a “wild and piteous cry — not a loud shriek, but a helpless, startled scream like the bleat of a frightened lamb…. ‘There’s a man in the room! Take me home; oh, take me home.’” At this point in the printed story, Stead typed a series of asterisks to imply brutal rape. “And then all once more was still,” he concluded.
In fact, Stead did not rape the child. Yet he wrote the story, which published in the Pall Mall Gazette in a three-part series called “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon,” as if he were a meticulous witness to a violent crime. While some facts were true — the sale of a young girl, the medical examination, the brothel — many of the details were fabricated to maximize drama and ensure reaction. It was a show of what could have happened and what often did. And, according to Stead, everything done to Armstrong outside of actual rape was unfortunate but ultimately justified. He bought, violated, and terrorized a young girl for the “public good.”
Before publishing a dramatized version of these events, Stead warned Gazette readers of his forthcoming series in a salacious teaser couched as an editor’s note. On July 4, 1885, under the headline “A Frank Warning,” he wrote, “[A]lthough we are thus compelled, in the public interest, to publish [the story]…we have no desire to inflict upon unwilling eyes the ghastly story of the criminal developments of modern vice.” Subtle. “Therefore we say quite frankly to-day that all those who are squeamish, and all those who are prudish, and all those who prefer to live in a fool’s paradise of imaginary innocence and purity, selfishly oblivious to the horrible realities which torment those whose lives are passed in the London Inferno, will do well not to read the Pall Mall Gazette of Monday and the three following days.”
The public was primed, and what published in the next several days horrified them. They read about the procurement of “fresh” virginal girls for unwilling sex, about padded rooms where no one could hear their screams, about strapping them down, and about how easy they were to buy.
The issues sold a million copies in one week. When some newsstands refused to carry them, volunteers (including one George Bernard Shaw) offered to distribute the papers individually, often at inflated prices.
Days after the publication of “The Maiden Tribute,” the public put renewed pressure on politicians to reform the age of consent law, a new version of which was currently moving through Parliament. On August 7, the measure was signed into law. The UK age of consent was raised from 13 to 16, where it stands today.
But when the dust settled, people began to examine Stead’s story more closely. The reporter had detailed the rapist’s (or in his words, the “purchaser’s”) exploits in the anonymous third person, giving the impression Stead had followed and witnessed the John in action. In reality, Stead himself was the puppetmaster of his own story. He invented details in a type of quasi-factual composite of, certainly, a very real problem in the 19th century London, but his reporting was lazy, misleading, and wholly unethical. And the price was a girl ripped from her family and exposed to sickening atrocities.
At one of the Salvation Army’s purity rallies that fall, the crowd agitated for answers. Protesters chanted “Armstrong! Armstrong!” and demanded to know what became of the girl in the story. Stead, who attended the event, stepped forward. “I will tell you about Armstrong,” he shouted, before admitting the entire story was a setup and the rape never happened. But not to worry, Armstrong was safe and sound; they shipped her to France to work as a laundress and live with a Salvationist family.
Authorities began an investigation. They arrested Jarrett for abducting Armstrong. When Stead headed to the police station to defend her, they arrested him too. After a short trial, Jarrett, Mourez, and Stead were convicted of abduction and procurement; the women served six months, while Stead served only three. As compensation, the Armstrong family was awarded a furnished house. Eliza Armstrong was returned, then sent to a training school for servants.
Stead served time like a celebrity. A fellow prisoner worked as his personal manservant. He continued to edit the Pall Mall Gazette from behind bars. “Never had I pleasanter holiday, a more charming season of repose,” he said after his release. In fact, his career blossomed. Every year on the anniversary of his conviction, he wore his prison uniform in “triumph”—until he died on the Titanic in 1912.
