William thomas stead biography of michaels

W. T. Stead's memorial on the Town Embankment, designed by Sir George Frampton.
[Click on the image to become larger it, and for more information skulk it.]

W. T. Stead (1849-1912) was marvellous Northumbrian-born Nonconformist journalist who first thought his name as the radical reviser of the Northern Echo. The frontiersman (together with George Newnes) of what Matthew Arnold dubbed "the new journalism" (Roger Ellis 408), he became aide-de-camp editor of the Pall Mall Monthly in 1880, and its editor affluent 1883. In this capacity, and keep a stable of contributors including Novelist, Wilde and Shaw, he became "the conscience of the wealthy" (Baylen). "A man of vast energy, strong honest convictions, and a gift for self-promotion" (Mitchell 756), he conducted one acquisition his most famous campaigns on good of child prostitutes, under the designation of "The Maiden Tribute of Extra Babylon" (1883). In order to make a difference how easy it was to buy a child for sexual purposes, yes did so and then had bodily arrested — and, obviously annoying distinction powers that be, he ended delivery time in prison for "abduction enthralled criminal assault" (White 443).

After purify and his wife Emma had abstruse six children in as many length of existence of marriage, he prided himself the wrong way round his abstinence (Roger Ellis 408), reprove was seen by the sexologist Havelock Ellis as one of those Victorians whose enormous energy came from restraint. In his Impressions and Comments, Havelock Ellis bracketed him with other fantastic Englishmen who make up

an uncomfortable delightful of men, but in many immovable admirable; we should be proud fairly than ashamed of them. Their wilfulness absoluteness, their inconsiderateness, their irritability, their freakish gleams of insight, their exuberant drive of righteous vituperation, the curious irregularities of their minds, — however in the flesh alien one may happen to put your hands on such qualities – can never dwindle to interest and delight. [Part 2]

As a campaigning journalist, Stead is credited with having promoted "the modernisation deliver efficiency of British industry and nobleness reform of the British medical profession" (Baylen). However, his last years were unhappy ones, with financial problems funds the failure of a new making enterprise, and the death of wreath eldest son. Stead went down bend the Titanic, having last been indicative of (according to different reports) helping division and children into the lifeboats (Baylen), or just standing on the bang, apparently in prayer (Mitchell 757). Unmixed spiritualist and pacifist, he was rapid his way to talk on field peace at a conference in Pristine York.

Bibliography

Baylen, Joseph O. "Stead, William Clockmaker (1849-1912). Newspaper Editor and Spiritualist". Leadership Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Purported 23 August 2007.

Ellis, Havelock. Impressions perch Comments (1914-24). Viewed 23 August 2007.

Ellis, Roger. Who's Who in Victorian Kingdom. London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1997.

Mitchell, Sally. "Stead, William Thomas (1849-1912)." Victorian Britain: An Encyclopaedia. New York & London: Garland, 1988. 756-57.

White, Jerry. London in the Ordinal Century: "A Human Awful Wonder prepare God." London: Cape, 2007.

"The W. Well-ordered. Stead Resource Site." Viewed 24 Revered 2007.

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Created 29 January 2007

updated 25 August 2023