The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon

 

Born in 1849 in Northumberland, W.T Stead became the editor of the Nothern Echo in 1872, while still in his very early twenties. He immediately set about turning the newspaper into an 'engine of social reform'. Stead had a variety of social concerns, but perhaps the most taboo of them was prostitution, which proliferated in the cities and towns of the newly industrialised kingdom. It is 'the ghastliest curse which haunts civilised society, which is steadily sapping the very foundations of our morality' Stead wrote. 

In 1883, Stead became the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, personally one of my favourite 19th century newspapers, but described as the 'Dunghill Gazette' by poet Algernon Swinburne. Stead's style of journalism, which could fairly be described as sensationalist, did lead to changes in legislation and policy, such as new housing law that came about through his 1883 attack on the slums, or the £3.5 million government investment that followed his expose of the ageing Navy. That said, the novelist Matthew Arnold called this style of journalism 'feather-brained'.

Throughout the 1870s and into the 1880s there had been increasing concern about the fate of women and girls who were trafficked into brothels. In 1883, a Criminal Law Amendment Bill, intended to raise the age of consent for girls from thirteen to sixteen, passed in the House of Lords but floundered in the House of Commons. This happened twice and when it was introduced again in 1885 it appeared that it would once more be set aside. An anti-vice campaigner named Benjamin Scott visited Stead and pleaded for help with making the issue a matter of public outrage. Stead worked with the Salvation Army and the London Committee for the Suppression of the Traffic in British Girls for Purposes of Continental Prostitution (catchy name) to investigate the problem but eventually he felt that this was simply not enough and he would need to do something far more dramatic and hard-hitting. 

In the summer of 1885, Stead would publish a series of articles under the title The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, in which he revealed the nature and extent of child sex trafficking in England, and demanded change. Despite the fact that you can read the full text online, I am going to reproduce vast swathes of it here because I like the high drama of Stead's language. Railing against the likelihood that the Criminal Law Amendment Bill was destined to fail once more, he issued his readers with a stark warning, entirely designed to drum up interest in the series that was to follow.

"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 [...] will do well not to read the Pall Mall Gazette of Monday and the three following days"

Introducing his subject, Stead wrote that

'London's lust annually uses up many thousands of women who are literally killed and made away with - living sacrifices slain in the service of vice. That may be inevitable, and with that I have nothing to do. [But] if the daughters of the people must be served up as dainty morsels to minister to the passions of the rich, let them at least attain an age where they can understand the nature of the sacrifice which they are asked to make. And if we must cast maidens - not seven, but seven times seven - nightly into the jaws of vice, let us see to it that they assent to their own immolation, and are not unwilling sacrifices procured by force and fraud'.

Stead went on to assert firstly that he had no interest in the criminalisation of sexual immorality between adults, as they would benefit more from the intervention of a teacher rather than a policeman. Secondly, he wanted to make it very clear to all his readers that his investigation was aimed at discovering the truth of the issue, and not at all concerned with ensuring convictions. "I am an investigator," Stead wrote, "not an informer".

"Some," Stead wrote, "are simply snared, trapped and outraged either when under the influence of drugs or after a prolonged struggle in a locked room, in which the weaker succumbs to sheer downright force. Others are regularly procured; bought at so much per head in some cases, or enticed under various promises into the fatal chamber from which they are never allowed to emerge until they have lost what woman ought to value more than life"

Okay, so Mr Stead was absolutely a man of his time, with sexist attitudes to match. But his investigation and the fallout from it makes for an excellent story. Stead's first step was to interview a police officer, who told him that the practice of procuring virgins for others to sexually assault was rampant in London. "Are these maids willing or unwilling parties to the transaction?" asked Stead. "Of course they are rarely willing, and as a rule they do not know what they are coming for" replied the police officer emphatically.

'"Why," I exclaimed, "the very thought is enough to raise hell."

"It is true," he said, "and although it ought to raise hell, it does not even raise the neighbours"

The officer went on the explain that even if she would be believed, the girl could not prosecute if she did not know the identity of her attacker and indeed might easily be unable to recognise him in the street. The next person Stead spoke to was a prominent but, as per Stead's agreement with his sources, unnamed MP. The MP laughed and told Stead, "I doubt the unwillingness of these virgins [...] it is nonsense to say it is rape; it is merely the delivery as per contract of the asset virginity in return for cash down. Of course there may be some cases in which the girl is really unwilling, but the regular supply comes from those who take a strictly businesslike view of the saleable value of their maidenhead".

Stead next spoke with a former brothel-owner whose own wife had been involved in prostitution since the age of fourteen. "A keeper who knows his business has his eyes open in all directions, " explained the man, "his stock of girls is constantly getting used up, and needs replenishing, and he has to be on the alert for likely "marks" to keep up the reputation of his house". The man went on to recall a time when he had heard of a very innocent "country lass" living in Horsham, whom he promptly went to visit. He proposed to her parents that she come to work for him as a maid and took her back to town with him. "We petted her and made a good deal of her," the man explained, "[...] and then I sold her to a young gentleman for £15 [...] I gave him the girl, to do what he liked with. He took her away and seduced her". The man told Stead that if the girl's parents had ever inquired after her he would have lied and said that she had run away with a young man. He had done such things many times, he said, and

"I once sold a girl twelve years old for £20 to a clergyman, who used to come to my house professedly to distribute tracts"

Stead's first instalment in the series continued in a similar vein, giving more and more examples not only of individuals who had been involved in trafficking but of the terrible things done to the girls to render them unable to escape. At the very end of the first instalment, under the sub-heading 'A Child of Thirteen Bought for £5' Stead related the purchase of a little girl he referred to as 'Lily', "a bright, fresh-looking little girl". Her mother was offered a sovereign for her by a woman (referred to as the 'procuress'), and being "poor, dissolute, and indifferent to everything but drink," agreed to the deal. When Lily left, her mother was "so drunk she hardly recognized her daughter. The father was hardly less indifferent". Lily was taken to have her virginity certified by an abortionist. "The poor little thing," exclaimed the abortionist, "she is so small, her pain will be extreme". She then sold the procuress a small bottle of chloroform and agreed that if the girl was injured by her impending assault then the abortionist would do her best to treat her.

Next, Lily was taken to a brothel in Regent Street. Taken upstairs, undressed and put to bed, the girl was drugged with chloroform and she soon fell asleep. The woman left and "all was quiet and still. A few moments later the door opened, and the purchaser entered the bedroom. He closed and locked the door. There was a brief silence. And then there rose a wild and piteous cry - not a loud shriek, but a helpless, startled scream like the bleat of a frightened lamb. And the child's voice was heard crying, in accents of terror, "There's a man in the room! Take me home; oh, take me home!" And then once more was still."

Stead's series of articles kicked up a storm and W.H Smith refused to sell the paper because of its taboo content. Eventually, volunteer newsboys and members of the Sally Army distributed it themselves. The Home Secretary begged Stead to halt publication but Stead ploughed on. The public's attention had certainly been caught and protests erupted, including a march to Hyde Park involving wagon loads of virgins in white. By mid August the Criminal Law Amendment Act had become law.

What Stead did not mention in his retelling of the story of 'Lily' was that the man in her bedroom was none other than he himself. It was he, along with other activists, who had arranged the purchase of the girl, entirely to prove a point. After Lily awoke and began to scream, Stead had left the room and she had been removed to a Salvation Army family in France to be cared for. Rival newspapers soon discovered the truth of the matter, along with the girl's real identity, Eliza Armstrong. The girl's mother claimed that she had no sold her daughter to be raped, but rather had believed that she would be going into service. Before long, Stead and his associates found themselves on trial at the Old Bailey.

At the trial, Lily/ Eliza testified that her mother had been asked in her presence whether the girl could go into service. A letter was also read to the court, written by Mrs Armstrong to her daughter in France, that read in part "me and your father were so pleased to hear from you, but not so pleased as we should be if we saw your dear face". The trial is long but much of the testimony is riveting, especially when it comes to Mrs Armstrong herself. She comes across as rather naïve, harassed by a life of poverty as a chimney-sweep's wife with several children, and keen that her daughter should get on in life. "I said Eliza could go on one condition," recalled Mrs Armstrong at the Old Bailey, "that she should write to me once a week, and that I should see her once a month". Ultimately, the whole situation appears to have first perplexed and next greatly alarmed Mrs Armstrong. Both Stead and the procuress, a woman named Jarrett, were found guilty of kidnapping Eliza Armstrong. Stead served 3 months at Holloway, where he lived as a first-class inmate complete with his own servant and an open fire.

W.T Stead in prison uniform

A graduate from Teesside University named Owen Mulpetre had set up this incredible website dedicated to W.T Stead. Inevitably, I cannot include everything here that I would like to and so I urge you to visit the website if you're interested to know more about the extraordinary W.T Stead. Eliza Armstrong appears to have moved to Northumberland as an adult and was twice widowed. Her later life can be read about on the British Library website here and also here. As for Stead, he wrote a pamphlet about his experiences at Holloway, which concludes "I have ever been the spoiled child of fortune, but never had I a happier lot than the two months I spent in happy Holloway". Make of that what you will. As for his journalistic career, it never quite recovered, something that was only exacerbated by his increasing interest in spiritualism. In 1912, Stead accepted an invitation to speak in the United States and booked himself onto a steamship. Unfortunately for him, that steamship was the RMS Titanic.

Stead perished along with around one and a half thousand others. A survivor of the disaster described that he attracted attention "even in that awful hour, on account of [his] superhuman composure and divine work," and once he "could do no more, he stood alone at the edge of the deck" in a "prayerful attitude of profound meditation." Another survivor saw Stead later, half in the water and holding onto debris alongside John Jacob Astor. "Their feet became frozen," the witness explained, "and they were compelled to release their hold".

For all of his (considerable) flaws, Stead did bring the issue of child sexual exploitation and trafficking into drawing rooms up and down the country. The passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act was one step closer to protecting children, but it had other consequences, not least for Oscar Wilde and countless other gay men who were prosecuted under different parts of the same legislation. Next week moves from the sinking Titanic to a disaster that occurred far closer to home.