| William Thomas Stead | |
|---|---|
William Thomas Stead |
|
| Born | July 5, 1849 Embleton, Northumberland, England |
| Died | April 15, 1912 (aged 62) RMS Titanic (sunk), Atlantic Ocean |
| Monuments | New York NY, 91st St and Central Park East and the Embankment in London near to Fleet Street |
| Nationality | British |
| Other names | W T Stead |
| Education | Silcoates School |
| Occupation | Journalist, editor |
| Employer | The Northern Echo |
| Home town | Howdon |
| Salary | £250 a year at the Northern Echo |
| Net worth | £13,000 probate |
| Political party | Liberal |
| Religion | Christian |
| Denomination | Congregationalist |
| Website | |
| http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/ | |
William Thomas Stead (5 July 1849 – 15 April 1912) was an English journalist and editor who, as one of the early pioneers of investigative journalism, became one of the most controversial figures of the Victorian era.[1] His 'New Journalism' paved the way for today's tabloid press.[2] He was influential in demonstrating how the press could be used to influence public opinion and government policy.[3] He was also well known as a world peace advocate, an advocate of women's rights, a defender of civil liberties, and a fighter for the deprived and oppressed.[3] He was among the most famous passengers aboard the RMS Titanic, losing his life when it sank in April 1912.[1]
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He was born in Embleton, Northumberland, the son of a Congregational minister. A year later the family moved to Howdon on the River Tyne.[4] Stead was largely educated at home, and by the age of five he was already well-versed in the Holy Scriptures and is said to have been able to read Latin almost as well as he could read English.[5] For two years he attended Silcoates School in Wakefield, but in 1863 at the age of 14 he was apprenticed in a merchant's office at Newcastle upon Tyne.[6]
From 1870 Stead contributed articles to the fledgling Darlington Northern Echo, and in 1871 despite his inexperience, was made the editor of the newspaper.[7] At the time, Stead at just 22, was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. Stead used Darlington's excellent railway connections to his advantage, increasing the newspaper's distribution to national levels.[8] Stead was always guided by a moral mission, influenced by his faith, and wrote to a friend that the position would be "a glorious opportunity of attacking the devil".[7]
In 1873 he married his childhood sweetheart, Emma Lucy Wilson and together they had six children.[9] He gained notoriety in 1876 for his coverage of the Bulgarian atrocities agitation. He is also credited as "a major factor" in helping Gladstone to win an overwhelming majority in the 1880 general election.[3][10] In 1880 he went to London to be assistant editor of the Pall Mall Gazette under John Morley. When Morley was elected to Parliament, he became editor (1883–1889). Over the next seven years he would develop what Matthew Arnold dubbed 'The New Journalism'.[9]
He made a feature of the Pall Mall extras, and his enterprise and originality exercised a potent influence on contemporary journalism and politics. He also introduced the interview, creating a new dimension in British journalism when he interviewed General Gordon in 1884.[11] 1885 saw him force the British government to supply an additional £5.5million to bolster weakening naval defences, after he published a series of articles.[10] Stead was no hawk however, instead believing that Britain's strong navy was necessary to maintain world peace.[12] He distinguished himself for his vigorous handling of public affairs, and his brilliant modernity in the presentation of news. However he is also credited as originating the modern journalistic technique of creating a news event rather than just reporting it, as his most famous 'investigation', the Eliza Armstrong case was to demonstrate.[13]
In 1886, he started a campaign against Sir Charles Dilke, 2nd Baronet over his nominal exoneration in the Crawford scandal. The campaign ultimately contributed to Dilke's misguided attempt to clear his name and consequent ruin.
In 1885, Stead entered upon a crusade against child prostitution by publishing a series of articles entitled The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon. In order to demonstrate the truth of his revelations, he arranged the 'purchase' of the 13-year-old daughter of a chimney sweep, Eliza Armstrong.
Though his action is thought to have furthered the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, it made his position on the paper impossible. In fact, his successful demonstration of the trade's existence led to his conviction and a three-month term of imprisonment at Coldbath Fields and Holloway prisons. He was convicted on technical grounds that he had failed to first secure permission for the "purchase" from the girl's father.
The Maiden Tribute campaign was the high point in Stead's career in daily journalism.[3]
On leaving the Pall Mall Stead founded the highly successful non-partisan monthly Review of Reviews (1890).[3] His abundant energy and facile pen found scope in many other directions in journalism of an advanced humanitarian type. This time saw Stead "at the very height of his professional prestige", according to E T Raymond.[14]
Beginning in 1895, Stead issued affordable reprints of classic literature under such titles as Penny Poets and Penny Popular Novels, in which he "boil[ed] down the great novels of the world so that they might fit into, say, sixty-four pages instead of six hundred".[15] His ethos behind the venture pre-dated Allen Lane's of Penguin Books by a number of years, and he became "the foremost publisher of paperbacks in the Victorian Age".[10]
Stead became an enthusiastic supporter of the peace movement, and of many other movements, popular and unpopular, in which he impressed the public generally as an extreme visionary, though his practical energy was recognized by a considerable circle of admirers and pupils.
With all his unpopularity, and all the suspicion and opposition engendered by his methods, his personality remained a forceful one both in public and private life. He was an early imperialist dreamer, whose influence on Cecil Rhodes in South Africa remained of primary importance; and many politicians and statesmen, who on most subjects were completely at variance with his ideas, nevertheless owed something to them. Rhodes made him his confidant, and was inspired in his will by his suggestions; and Stead was intended to be one of Rhodes's executors. At the time of the Second Boer War he threw himself into the Boer cause and attacked the government with characteristic violence. His name was struck out.[16]
The number of his publications gradually became very large, as he wrote with facility and sensational fervour on all sorts of subjects, from The Truth about Russia (1888) to If Christ Came to Chicago! (1894), and from Mrs Booth (1900) to The Americanisation of the World (1902).
Stead was a pacifist and a campaigner for peace, who favoured a "United States of Europe" and a "High Court of Justice among the nations", yet he also preferred the use of force in the defence of law.[17][18] He extensively covered the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907 (for the last he printed a daily paper during the four month conference). He has a bust at the Peace Palace in The Hague. As a result of these activities, Stead was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.[19]
Stead was an Esperantist, and often supported Esperanto, the international language, in a monthly column in Review of Reviews.[20]
In 1904, after the failure of his latest venture, The Daily Paper, after only a few weeks, Stead suffered a nervous breakdown.[21]
In the 1890s, Stead became increasingly interested in spiritualism.[22] In 1893 he founded a spiritualist quarterly, called Borderland, in which he gave full play to his interest in psychical research.[22][23] Stead was editor and he employed Ada Goodrich Freer as assistant editor: she was also a substantial contributor under the pseudonym "Miss X".[24] Stead claimed that he was in the habit of communicating with Freer by telepathy and automatic writing.[25][26][27] The magazine ceased publication in 1897.[22]
Stead claimed to be in receipt of messages from the spirit world, and, in 1892, to be able to produce automatic writing.[22][25] His spirit contact was alleged to be the departed Julia Ames, an American temperance reformer and journalist whom he met in 1890 shortly before her death. In 1909 he established Julia's Bureau where inquirers could obtain information about the spirit world from a group of resident mediums.[22]
Spiritualism was an accepted pastime in late Victorian Britain, and not considered unusual, with such notable followers as George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Conan Doyle.[10] Nevertheless, Grant Richards said that "The thing that operated most strongly in lessening Stead's hold on the general public was his absorption in spiritualism".[28]
After his death, a group of his admirers founded a Spiritualist organisation in Chicago, Illinois called the William T. Stead Memorial Center. The resident pastor and medium was Mrs. Cecil M. Cook. Most of the many books published by the Center were written by the Wisconsin-born journalist and author Lloyd Kenyon Jones.
Stead boarded the Titanic for a visit to the USA to take part in a peace congress at Carnegie Hall at the request of William Howard Taft. After the ship struck the iceberg, Stead helped several women and children into the lifeboats, in an act "typical of his generosity, courage, and humanity".[3] After all the boats had gone, Stead went into the 1st Class Smoking Room, where he was last seen sitting in a leather chair and reading a book.[29]
A later sighting of Stead, by survivor Philip Mock, has him clinging to a raft with John Jacob Astor IV. "Their feet became frozen," reported Mock, "and they were compelled to release their hold. Both were drowned."[30] William Stead's body was not recovered. Further tragedy was added by the widely held belief that he was due to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that same year.
Stead had often claimed that he would die from either lynching or drowning.[3] Stead published two pieces that gained greater significance in light of his fate on the Titanic. On 22 March 1886, he published an article named "How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic, by a Survivor",[31] where a steamer collides with another ship, with high loss of life due to lack of lifeboats. Stead had added "This is exactly what might take place and will take place if liners are sent to sea short of boats". In 1892, Stead published a story called From the Old World to the New,[32] in which a vessel, the Majestic, rescues survivors of another ship that collided with an iceberg.
In 2001, the W.T. Stead Resource Site, a not-for-profit reference website devoted to the study of W.T. Stead was launched to encourage and advance debate on both Stead himself and the issues in which he became embroiled. It is currently the largest online database of material on W.T. Stead. The site is utilised by a wide variety of learning institutions, including libraries, colleges and universities within the UK and around the world.
In 2009, the British Library selected the W.T. Stead Resource Site as a suitable candidate for its web archiving programme, in which websites that are considered a valuable contribution to UK documentary heritage are permanently archived for future generations.
14 boxes of the papers of William Thomas Stead are held at Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge ref GBR/0014/STED. The bulk of this collection comprises Stead's letters from his many correspondents including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, William Gladstone, and Christabel Pankhurst. There are also papers and a diary relating to his time spent in Holloway prison in 1885, and to his many publications.
Papers of William Thomas Stead are also held at The Women's Library at London Metropolitan University, ref 9/11
Major published sources are as follows: Eckley, Grace. Maiden Tribute: A Life of W. T. Stead, 2007. Jones, Victor G., Saint or Sensationalist? 1988. NewsStead, twice-yearly Ed. Grace Eckley, 1992-2004. Robertson Scott, J. W. The Life and Death of a Newspaper, 1954. Whyte, Frederic. A Life of W. T. Stead, 2 volumes, 1925.
| Preceded by John Morley |
Editor of The Pall Mall Gazette 1883–1889 |
Succeeded by Edward Cook |