Commonplace 236 George & His Contemporaries: WT Stead PART TWO.
Whenever we think of Stead, we see in our mind’s eye that lanky weasel-eyed bearded spiv with a colossal sense of smug self-importance oozing out and illuminating the space around him. Hubris, chutzpah, cojones, rampant ego mania, over-weaning self-importance are terms that almost encompass his utter belief in his own judgement and the validity of his own world view. Only the conviction that his god was firmly on his side could have offered that kind of will to succeed. Only an evangelist, a psychological terrorist for that god, could have invoked the necessary drive. It’s as if the hunt for fresh victims is his life’s work. The vulpine twinkle in the eyes is for the many victims – the politicians, hypocrites, sinners in general, and women he preyed on – who provided the stepping stones required to move him onwards and upwards in his journey to greatness.
Stead, for a time, was one of the most influential characters in British public life. His opinion was sought on the main controversies of the day, and even when his views were not solicited, he freely ploughed in with his opinions and made sure his views were broadcast. He was famed for how quickly he could turn out copy and how swiftly he could sum up situations and then offer solutions for them. He knew his reading public inside out - what would make them outraged, offended, sympathetic, patriotic, angry and hopeful. He liked to create the impression he was a 'man of the people', that he spoke for the ordinary woman or man in the street - an illusion,of course, and we are much more savvy these days about anyone who sets themselves up as spokespersons for the unrepresented, the ignored and the undervalued.
Common sense plain-speaking prose was WT's preferred journalistic style, as if the story itself required no embellishment to make it any more sensational. This is not to say his writing was simplistic - he carefully manipulated his readership into coming to his opinions very quickly. Offering solutions to the problems he raised - problems some people didn't know existed until he told them they did - was a strength, even when those solutions made things worse, as they occasionally did. Framing the problem in religious terms as if he was an evangelist preacher as much as a journalist compounded by the assertion that the truth was an instrument of his creator, gave added gravitas to all his causes. This is why his campaign to expose the sexual predation of young girls (and boys) by those who considered innocent children to be fair game as long as they were innocent working class children captured the imagination of the woman and man on the Clapham omnibus click.
The scandal was also known as the Case of Eliza Armstrong: the criminal prosecution of Stead and his accomplices for the abduction and indecent assault of thirteen-year-old Eliza Armstrong. From the impoverished Marylebone area of London, Eliza was the real face behind the character of Lily, whose tragic fate in 'A Child of Thirteen Bought for £5' concluded the first instalment of The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon
. Having heard during his investigations that unscrupulous parents were willing to sell their own children into prostitution, Stead sent his agent, reformed prostitute Rebecca Jarrett, into Marylebone to purchase a child, to show to how easily young girls could be procured. The child procured was Eliza Armstrong, allegedly sold to Jarrett by her own mother for just £5. Though never physically harmed, Eliza was nonetheless put through the motions of what a real child victim would have had to experience, including being "certified" a virgin by an abortionist midwife and being taken to a brothel where she was drugged with chloroform. She was then packed off to France under the care of the Salvation Army, leaving Stead to re-invent her as Lily in the Pall Mall Gazette. The subterfuge, however, did not prevent Eliza's mother from recognising the character of Lily in the The Maiden Tribute as her daughter. Claiming she had been duped into parting with Eliza, she went to the police, who brought charges of abduction and indecent assault against Stead and his accomplices. After two lengthy trials, Stead and three others, including Jarrett, were convicted at the Old Bailey and incarcerated. Stead was sentenced to three months in Coldbath-in-the-Fields prison, but was later transferred to Holloway as a first class inmate.
Publishing the sordid facts after a sting operation amounting to kidnap and white slavery, Stead failed to see that his actions amounted to a crime. The fact that he used deception to kidnap the girl passed him by. But, he rationalised and claimed to have been acting for the greater good. In fact, unlike George and his stint in prison, WT celebrated his 'martyrdom' every year by donning his prison uniform. However, I can't imagine the Prison Service allowing him to keep his prison clothes, so he probably had a replica run up when he was freed.
Stead's approach to exposing this story is said to have changed the face of journalism forever - for the worst. Was his motivation to rescue the vulnerable or to sell newspapers? Was he as bad as the sexual predators? This type of reporting was referred to as 'new journalism', but looking back it doesn't seem so far removed from what in the twentieth century became known as the 'gutter press'. Newspapers that rely on predominantly titillating sex stories for their copy are termed 'scandal sheets' and even the legitimate exposés are often seen as the worst form of investigative reporting. The farce that was the UK's Leveson Inquiry click pretty much demonstrated how reviled the press are these days - Stead's methods now refined into cross-platform surveillance techniques and phone hacking seen as legitimate journalistic tools. As it happened, Stead's reputation was forever sullied by the Maiden Tribute, and his judgement called in to question, especially when he became more deeply drawn to Spiritualism. And there was no end of child exploitation, as we all know.
Back in 1884, Stead cast his gaze on the British Royal Navy. His 'What Is The Truth About The Navy By One Who Knows' click was the result of his research into the woefully under-funded and under-outfitted RN. Ever the amateur sailor (he kept a small place at Hayling Island near Portsmouth and was often to be found sailing the Solent and developing Chichester into a working sailing harbour), Stead initially had an interest in defence issues more than the actual Senior Service, but he recognised the precarious nature of Britain's place in the turbulent world of disputed international borders, reneged on political agreements, broken alliances and the potential for wars. The general sense of impending doom that haunted the late Victorian mindset had replaced the complacent view that Britain Ruled the Waves, but Stead was one of the first to realise technology had brought innovations to sea-going forces, but investment in the Navy had stagnated. By asking publicly in the Pall Mall Gazette (September 15th 1884) a series of very basic questions about the maintenance of the fleet and the readiness of the naval ports, the number and strength of the ironclad warships, and the preparedness of the dockyards for refitting in a time of war, and the state of the supply network to service the Navy's need for coal to fuel the ships, Stead brought the spotlight immediately down on what he considered to be an enormous area of national vulnerability. By sharing his concerns with the reading public - as opposed to going through the representatives of the Admiralty or MPs in the House of Commons - he raised public interest and promoted an Empire-wide debate. The upshot was a review of the Navy and the implementation of a vast amount of investment.
The Titanic sinking saw Stead off, when he was on his way to a religious conference in New York. Ironic as much as Titanic. 'Nearer My God To Thee' indeed! click. For most of his adult life, WT Stead was an advocate of Spiritualism. This sort of malarkey always marks a person down as a gullible fool, much as Scientology and believing some of us are space lizards does, but Arthur Conan Doyle and Alfred Russell Wallace click also believed the dead could speak to the living. I suppose Spiritualism isn't any less believable than any other form of religion, but why hasn't WT Stead come back to tell us what to do about the Migrant Crisis or Daish or whether or not the UK should remain in the EU?? He must be bursting with good advice and we on the Clapham omnibus are very much in need of it.
For a very illuminating place to discover all things WT Stead go to this website click and wallow in the wonder of the man.
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| WT Stead with Pope Leo XIII 'on the brain' by legendary cartoonist Phil May |
Common sense plain-speaking prose was WT's preferred journalistic style, as if the story itself required no embellishment to make it any more sensational. This is not to say his writing was simplistic - he carefully manipulated his readership into coming to his opinions very quickly. Offering solutions to the problems he raised - problems some people didn't know existed until he told them they did - was a strength, even when those solutions made things worse, as they occasionally did. Framing the problem in religious terms as if he was an evangelist preacher as much as a journalist compounded by the assertion that the truth was an instrument of his creator, gave added gravitas to all his causes. This is why his campaign to expose the sexual predation of young girls (and boys) by those who considered innocent children to be fair game as long as they were innocent working class children captured the imagination of the woman and man on the Clapham omnibus click.
Lifted from the above cited website (with thanks):
Published in the Pall Mall Gazette in July, 1885, The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon was Stead's highly scandalous expose of child prostitution. A tour de force of late nineteenth century journalism, it exposed in graphic detail the entrapment, abduction and 'sale' of young under-privileged girls to London brothels. Written in successive instalments, Stead's 'infernal narrative', as he called it, revealed to a respectable readership a criminal underworld of stinking brothels, fiendish procuresses, drugs and padded chambers, where upper-class paedophiles could revel 'in the cries of an immature child'.
The scandal was also known as the Case of Eliza Armstrong: the criminal prosecution of Stead and his accomplices for the abduction and indecent assault of thirteen-year-old Eliza Armstrong. From the impoverished Marylebone area of London, Eliza was the real face behind the character of Lily, whose tragic fate in 'A Child of Thirteen Bought for £5' concluded the first instalment of The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon
. Having heard during his investigations that unscrupulous parents were willing to sell their own children into prostitution, Stead sent his agent, reformed prostitute Rebecca Jarrett, into Marylebone to purchase a child, to show to how easily young girls could be procured. The child procured was Eliza Armstrong, allegedly sold to Jarrett by her own mother for just £5. Though never physically harmed, Eliza was nonetheless put through the motions of what a real child victim would have had to experience, including being "certified" a virgin by an abortionist midwife and being taken to a brothel where she was drugged with chloroform. She was then packed off to France under the care of the Salvation Army, leaving Stead to re-invent her as Lily in the Pall Mall Gazette. The subterfuge, however, did not prevent Eliza's mother from recognising the character of Lily in the The Maiden Tribute as her daughter. Claiming she had been duped into parting with Eliza, she went to the police, who brought charges of abduction and indecent assault against Stead and his accomplices. After two lengthy trials, Stead and three others, including Jarrett, were convicted at the Old Bailey and incarcerated. Stead was sentenced to three months in Coldbath-in-the-Fields prison, but was later transferred to Holloway as a first class inmate.  |
| Stead in his fancy dress of choice |
Stead's approach to exposing this story is said to have changed the face of journalism forever - for the worst. Was his motivation to rescue the vulnerable or to sell newspapers? Was he as bad as the sexual predators? This type of reporting was referred to as 'new journalism', but looking back it doesn't seem so far removed from what in the twentieth century became known as the 'gutter press'. Newspapers that rely on predominantly titillating sex stories for their copy are termed 'scandal sheets' and even the legitimate exposés are often seen as the worst form of investigative reporting. The farce that was the UK's Leveson Inquiry click pretty much demonstrated how reviled the press are these days - Stead's methods now refined into cross-platform surveillance techniques and phone hacking seen as legitimate journalistic tools. As it happened, Stead's reputation was forever sullied by the Maiden Tribute, and his judgement called in to question, especially when he became more deeply drawn to Spiritualism. And there was no end of child exploitation, as we all know.
Back in 1884, Stead cast his gaze on the British Royal Navy. His 'What Is The Truth About The Navy By One Who Knows' click was the result of his research into the woefully under-funded and under-outfitted RN. Ever the amateur sailor (he kept a small place at Hayling Island near Portsmouth and was often to be found sailing the Solent and developing Chichester into a working sailing harbour), Stead initially had an interest in defence issues more than the actual Senior Service, but he recognised the precarious nature of Britain's place in the turbulent world of disputed international borders, reneged on political agreements, broken alliances and the potential for wars. The general sense of impending doom that haunted the late Victorian mindset had replaced the complacent view that Britain Ruled the Waves, but Stead was one of the first to realise technology had brought innovations to sea-going forces, but investment in the Navy had stagnated. By asking publicly in the Pall Mall Gazette (September 15th 1884) a series of very basic questions about the maintenance of the fleet and the readiness of the naval ports, the number and strength of the ironclad warships, and the preparedness of the dockyards for refitting in a time of war, and the state of the supply network to service the Navy's need for coal to fuel the ships, Stead brought the spotlight immediately down on what he considered to be an enormous area of national vulnerability. By sharing his concerns with the reading public - as opposed to going through the representatives of the Admiralty or MPs in the House of Commons - he raised public interest and promoted an Empire-wide debate. The upshot was a review of the Navy and the implementation of a vast amount of investment.
The Fleet
You, you, if you shall fail to understand
What England is, and what her all-in-all,
On you will come the curse of all the land,
Should this old England fall
Which Nelson left so great.
II.
His isle, the mightiest Ocean-power on earth,
Our own fair isle, the lord of every sea—
Her fuller franchise—what would that be worth—
Her ancient fame of Free—
Where she . . . a fallen state?
III.
Her dauntless army scatter’d, and so small,
Her island-myriads fed from alien lands—
The fleet of England is her all-in-all;
Her fleet is in your hands,
And in her fleet her fate.
IV.
You, you, that have the ordering of her fleet,
If you should only compass her disgrace,
When all men starve, the wild mob’s million feet
Will kick you from your place,
But then too late, too late.
'Heart of Oak' click is the official march of the Royal Navy click and we see below that WT Stead was ready to do his maritime bit - Steady Boys, Steady!
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Stead feeling a bit Stead-y in his Hayling back garden.
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