Who Was W. T. Stead? (Short Read)
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
William Thomas Stead (1849-1912) was a somewhat unlikely ally of the early Salvation Army. But without the influence and support of Stead, it would have been far more difficult for the Army to gain the popular approval with which it entered the 20th century.
W. T. Stead’s Early Life
Stead was born in Northumberland; his father was a Congregationalist minister and his mother was the daughter of a farmer who would get involved in local political campaigns. Stead was mostly educated at home by his parents and was said to be able to recite the Bible and speak and write Latin as well as English by the time he was five.
His family moved to a town on the River Tyne, where his mother joined in with local campaigns against the Contagious Diseases Act, which made prostitutes working in towns with a military garrison submit to medical inspections. Josephine Butler was part of these campaigns.
To understand who was W. T. Stead we need to highlight the influence of his parents. His mother’s political engagement, combined with his father’s religious instruction, gave Stead the foundation for his ethical world. The ongoing influence is evident in an article he wrote about ‘being a Christ’.
https://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/works-and-memoirs-of-w-t-stead/stead-on-being-a-christ/
Stead and the Invention of Investigative Journalism
By the time that Stead was working with the Army he was the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, a newspaper which would eventually become the London Evening Standard. At the time, the Pall Mall Gazette was seen as something of a “muck rakeing” kind of newspaper which dug out all the dirty secrets of people in power. It was the father of the tabloid newspaper.
Stead was known in his life as the most famous journalist in the British Empire. He got involved in promoting popular campaigns seeking to resolve problems in society, published interviews with significant figures, and generally made enough of a nuisance of himself that lots of people knew his name and what he did.
Stead was central to the development of investigative journalism as well would know it today and had an impact on huge social campaigns. However, he became a complicated and controversial figure. He often criticised people in positions of power and highlighted social inequality which put him on the wrong side of other newspaper editors.
Stead was involved in what Matthew Arnold called the “New Journalism.” This meant that he included his own opinions not just events, in what he published. Something that generally wasn’t done at the time by editors. He didn’t just report the news, he told people what to think about what happened.
He also included pictures and maps with the stories and broke up longer articles with eye-catching subtitles to keep the reader engaged. He wanted everybody to be able to get the news, not just those with a decent attention span.
Stead’s first encounter with the Army came when he was working for The Northern Echo. He was reporting on their ‘invasion’ of Darlington by Captain Rose (22) and Lieutenant Annie (19), whom he describes as neither being very good at reading or writing. He was shocked by the noise of the energetic Army services, and especially by the people who the two young officers went and gathered straight from the street.
Stead And The Salvation Army
Stead was even more shocked by the changes it made to the people who actually turned up to the meetings. One example is given of a hostler who stops hitting his horses after starting to attend Army meetings. But most of all, he was shocked by the dangers that the officers endured for the sake of their mission.
He would later write about the experience, saying:
The first letter I ever wrote to headquarters was a brief note to the General complaining of the cruelty of sending two young women—one of whom seemed threatened with consumption—to undertake such exhausting work. I added, what I fully believed, that if they broke down and died he deserved to be indicted for manslaughter. The General’s reply was characteristic: “You would never do for a general,” he said, “a general must not be afraid to spend his soldiers in order to carry positions.”
Stead’s initial glimpse of the Army, as disconcerting as it first appeared, did not put him off from continuing to keep and eye out for further Army activities. The religion of the Army was alien and unwelcoming for Stead, who had his own quite unorthodox beliefs.
But the social outreach of the Army, especially the Slum Sisters, caught his attention and appreciation in a way that all the fiery preaching in the world could not. If you want to read the whole article here is a link:
Stead and General Gordon
A key moment that propelled Stead into the limelight was when he interviewed General Gordon about the crisis in the Sudan. General Gordon was a celebrated military commander and noted Christian Philanthropist. The Sudan, then under British rule was facing the growth in the slave trade and an Islamist rising under the Mahdi who has raised an apocalyptic prophetic rebellion in expectation of the end of the world.
Stead used his influence and the size of his readership to persuade the Government to send Gordon to the Sudan to take over, which led to Gordon’s death and a military disaster for the British. The general popularity that came for Stead in the light of the hero worship for Gordon placed Stead in a position to be able to advocate for social causes.
Stead’s first major social campaign was in response to a Nonconformist pamphlet called The Bitter Cry of Outcast London. His articles painted a lurid picture of London slums which led to a Royal Commission which recommended clearing the slums and building low cost housing.
Stead and Social Justice Campaigns
His writing, and the size of the leadership of the Pall Mall Gazette drove the campaign into the public eye and especially into the public conscience.
The moralistic edge of the British population in the nineteenth century must not be underrated. It was the strength of public concern that drove the British government to act to end slavery around the world.
When the British public could be motivated for a moral cause then their voices drove the government to act. Stead would provide a megaphone for the voices of the people and raise awareness of issues for that people.
W. T. Stead, The Maiden Tribute, and the Eliza Armstrong Case
Stead is perhaps most famous for his role in the Eliza Armstrong case. This was an early example of a journalist creating news and not only reporting news. He went investigating to find evidence to tell the story of something wrong with society.
In 1885, in the wake of Josephine Butler’s fight for the repeal of the contagious diseases act, Stead campaigned against child prostitution through a series of four articles titled The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon. At that time the age of consent was 13, but it was common for brothel owners to purchase younger virgins from poor families or from the continent and then sell their virginity to rich old men for a lot of money.
Previously, Josephine Butler had made a friendship with Florence Booth (the wife of Bramwell Booth) who had been appointed to run the first Salvation Army rescue home for fallen women in Whitechapel then went on to run the Army’s rescue work and women’s social work.
The relationship between Florence Booth and Josephine Butler brought the Army on board with Stead. Josephine Butler was a key consultant on the Maiden Tribute campaign including organising the timing of the actions taken.
Stead and Butler were significant figures in this campaign. They provided the expertise, the publicity, and the media. Josephine Butler gave the campaign a sense of acceptability. Stead had the experience, the contacts, and the fame, to be able to make people pay attention.
The role of the Army was relatively small in the campaign. Most histories barely mention the Army’s involvement in the matter. But the members of the Army, involved in the rescue work on the ground, were able to provide the method and opportunity for the campaign to go ahead.
As part of the research for these articles, Stead arranged the purchase of Eliza Armstrong, a 13 year old daughter of a London chimney sweep. This was done in partnership with Bramwell Booth and a former Brotherl owner and procuratrix Rebecca Jarrett who had been recently saved and become a Salvationist. They did this to show how easy it was to purchase underage children for sex. Something which the establishment believed to be impossible.
After the articles were published Stead and the team were put on trial. Stead ended up spending 3 months in prison for abduction while Jarrett was imprisoned for 6 months. Neither Bramwell Booth or Josephine Butler went to prison.
The campaign was successful and the law was changed and the age of consent was raised to 16. The story went on to influence George Bernard Shaw to write the story to write Pygmalion. If you want to read what Stead wrote here is a link to his articles on the subject:
Stead later wrote a memoir about his experiences in the Eliza Armstrong case. Here is a link to the article:
Stead The Social Campaigner
Stead went on to support and encourage trade unionism as well as other social campaigns. He also continued to support the work of The Salvation Army, writing articles and books to raise awareness of their ministry and effectively ghost writing large sections of In Darkest England and The Way Out.
He also wrote an article on the role of revivals, particularly in the West of England, which is informative for the early days of the Army. Here is the link:
Stead The Spiritualist
However, one element of Stead’s like made him a somewhat unusual ally of the Army. Stead was a keen spiritualist. This was not uncommon in the later parts of the Victorian era. There was a groundswell of support for spiritualism, especially amongst the upper-middle classes of London.
Arthur Conan Doyle and W. T. Stead went to lots of Spiritualist events together and investigated evidence of psychical behaviours. Stead started a quarterly publication called Borderland in 1893 to promote and support spiritualism.
He and his family had their own personal experiences as well. The Stead house was on Smith square in London, where the EU embassy is now. Stead lived with his daughter Estelle. The story is told that Estelle was laying in bed and then gets woken up in the middle of the night by a man who comes into her room, slams the door, takes off his hat, sits down at the desk, and begins writing. This happens 3 nights in a row.
Stead suggests getting a spirit indicator, a kind of machine which was meant to enable people to talk to the ghosts, so that they could speak to the ghostly figure who went into Estelle’s room at night.
Apparently the machine revealed that the ghost was called Gordon Knight, a minor poet who specialised in “rollicking songs of the sea” and Estelle and the ghost become friends. They talk frequently and the ghost stops slamming the door and becomes friends instead.
But then Stead takes a trip to America on the Titanic and drowns at its sinking. Ten years later Estelle publishes a book called The Blue Island: Experiences of a New Arrival Beyond the Veil. This book was meant to be a record of communication with Stead made via automatic writing by the medium Pardon Woodman.
W. S. Stead was a good ally to the Army, promoting it’s work and support it’s mission. But because the work of the Army fit in with what Stead already believed needed doing. Stead would never have been a Salvationist. His spiritualism was just one reason for this.
The relationship between the Army and Stead indicates the degree to which both Stead and the Army were willing to be pragmatic about their allies to achieve a shared end. That pragmatism endures for the Army in it’s willingness to work with charities, faith groups, and the government in order to achieve shared goals that benefit the community.
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Articles and photos retrieved from:
https://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/
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