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[ Graphical: Channel4 Homepage ]
Roy Hattersley looks at the life of the editor whose stories of London's sexual underworld boosted his paper's circulation but also forced a change in the law to protect poor girls from exploitation.
W T Stead was the father of modern journalism at its best and worst. In 1885 he carried out an investigation into child prostitution of which the Sunday Times, in the glory days of Harold Evans' Insight Team, would have been proud. But he also, in the words of Mr Baldwin's condemnation of the inter-war popular press, 'Exercised the power of the harlot down the ages, power without responsibility.' At his best and at his worst he operated in a way which, when employed by today's journalists, remains profoundly controversial. Many of the stories he reported, although true, were his creations.
Stead, for years the editor of the Northern Echo, came to London as deputy editor of the Pall Mall Gazette - a distant ancestor of the London Evening Standard. When John Morley, his editor and a Member of Parliament, was made Secretary of State for Ireland, Mr Gladstone asked the new cabinet minister if he was confident that he could deal with that most distressful country. Morley replied that, if he could manage Stead, he could manage anything. Stead succeeded him as editor and became the most sensational figure in 19th century journalism.
A taste of success
Stead's first sensational campaign was based on a Nonconformist pamphlet, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London. His lurid stories of squalid life in the slums had a wholly beneficial effect on the capital. A Royal Commission recommended that the government should clear the slums and encourage low-cost housing in their place. It was Stead's first success. A Stead catastrophe was to follow. Whilst Gladstone hesitated to defend the Sudan against the Mahdi and his Islamic nationalists, Stead agitated for Christianity to be defended by the despatch of a thoroughly Christian general to Khartoum. The result was the death of General Gordon and the defeat of the Gladstone administration which had yielded to popular clamour.
Stead's final campaign - and undoubtedly his most unscrupulous - was waged with the assistance of a young naval officer called Captain John Fisher, one day to become First Lord of the Admiralty. Stead claimed that British naval superiority - emotionally important to Victorian England - was under threat and that the competing powers could outrun and outgun British Men of War. His 'Truth about the Navy' campaign was largely an invention. But it resulted in a naval spending programme that the country could not afford. His technique was christened 'new journalism'.
Economical with the truth
Stead, although a religious man, was never able to focus on the moral dilemma which his tactics represented. There is no doubt that occasionally the results of his campaign were unequivocally beneficial. But even when the outcome did nothing but good his efforts were normally dependent on creation and contrivance. Inevitably his critics asked a question which is asked of campaigning journalists today. Did he fight the good fight because of a burning desire to improve society? Or did he simply realise that supporting virtue - and providing detailed descriptions of the vice against which he battled - sold newspapers? The charge made against him at the end of his most notorious campaign was that all he cared about was circulation.
A scoop
What came to be called the 'Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon' was not an invention. Young girls were purchased for a few pounds in London and employed as child prostitutes in the capital or exported, like cattle, to continental Europe. Stead's attention was drawn to the scandal by Josephine Butler - a campaigner for women's rights - and the Salvation Army which had long campaigned against what it called 'white slavery'. Saving fallen women had become a particular preoccupation of Catherine Booth, wife of the Salvation Army's founder, and her son, Bramwell. Stead, by then the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, described in his paper what he knew to be true. His revelation was reviled and condemned. At least to defend his own reputation he set out to prove that children were for sale.
He provided the proof in a way that, to objective observers, should have been regarded as absolutely conclusive. He 'bought' Eliza Armstrong from her parents and then went through the whole ghastly procedure of preparing her for export. She was examined to prove that she was still a virgin and therefore not damaged goods. Then she was taken to a brothel and lightly drugged to await the arrival of her purchaser. Stead, anxious to play the part of libertine almost in full, drank a bottle of champagne before he made the assignation - even though he was teetotal. He entered Eliza's room and, regarding that as confirmation that he could have had his wicked way, withdrew to write his story.
The revelations were an immediate sensation. Crowds besieged the offices of the Pall Mall Gazette. Some of them were fighting for copies, others were denouncing the damage he had done to the reputation of England's upper classes. Copies of the issue in which the story appeared were sold, secondhand, at premium prices. Bernard Shaw telegraphed Stead to say that he was prepared to act as a paper boy and sell 1,000 copies on street corners. Then it was revealed that, although the story was true in every detail, the part of the seducer had been acted out by Stead himself.
The weight of the establishment
Inevitably the establishment turned upon him. The man who had once been the guardian of children's virtue became a convicted fraud. He was actually prosecuted for carrying out the offence he had chosen to expose. The case turned on a technicality. Stead had 'bought' Eliza Armstrong from her mother without obtaining the permission of the illegitimate child's father. Had he obtained the agreement of both parents, the purchase would have been legal. As it was he was technically at fault, convicted and sent to prison. The judge's summing up which preceded the sentence claimed that Stead's prosecution had vindicated London's reputation. Claims that child prostitution were rife in England, he said, were conclusively disproved.
Stead's defeat was a victory for the establishment but a genuine moral majority battled on. As a result of the corruption Stead had exposed, the age of consent was increased from 13 to 16 and the first step was taken to protect children from sexual exploitation. Stead was so excited by the whole event that, until his death, he wore his prison uniform on the anniversary of his conviction. However, in turn, he became the prisoner of the social purity movement. He must take some responsibility for the destruction of the leader of the Irish Home Rule movement Charles Stuart Parnell and of the MP Charles Dilke. Both men were exposed after being cited in divorce cases, which the Victorians regarded as sexual irregularities. Their careers were ruined. The destruction of both those politicians, like the campaign to end child prostitution, illustrate the question which hangs over Stead's entire career. Did he seek justice or to increase circulation?
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