William T. Stead

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William T. Stead

William Thomas Stead (born July 5, 1849 in Embleton , Northumberland , England ; † April 15, 1912 in the North Atlantic when the Titanic sank ) was a British journalist , editor and spiritualist who was mainly active in the field of investigative journalism and himself campaigned for the peace movement and for social and political reforms.

Starts as a journalist

William T. Stead as a child (around 1860)

William Thomas Stead came in 1849 in the village of Embleton in the northern English county of Northumberland as the second of nine children of Rev. William Stead (1814-1884) and his wife Isabella, nee. Jobson (1824–1875) to the world. The father had originally worked as a cutler , but was since 1848 congregational pastor of the parish of Embleton. Stead was initially tutored at home by his father and raised in a strictly religious manner. From 1861 to 1863 he attended the Silcoates School in Wakefield , West Yorkshire and then, at the age of 14, apprenticed to a merchant in Newcastle upon Tyne . On June 10, 1873, he married his childhood sweetheart Emma Lucy Wilson, with whom he had six children: William (1874-1907), Henry (1875-1923), Alfred (1877-1933), Emma Wilson (1879-1966), John Edward (1883-1949) and Pearl (1889-1973).

William T. Stead with wife Emma and six children (around 1900)

Stead took an early interest in journalism and in 1871 became editor of the Northern Echo in Darlington . He held this position until he went to London in September 1880 and began working as an assistant editor for the national evening newspaper Pall Mall Gazette under John Morley . When Morley was elected to the House of Commons in 1883 , Stead took over its post as editor-in-chief. He stayed that way until 1889. Under his leadership, the Pall Mall Gazette continued to develop . He published extra editions and introduced the hitherto unknown journalistic tool of interviews (in 1884 he personally interviewed Major General Charles George Gordon and in 1886 the Russian Tsar Alexander III ).

He made a name for himself through his energetic handling of public affairs and his modern presentation style. Overall, he is believed to have had a major impact on British journalism in the late 19th century. Stead was a strict puritan who sought social reform and was aware of the press as an opinion-influencing tool. He was also a supporter of the Salvation Army and the Liberal Party .

Fight against child prostitution

In 1885, Stead led a crusade against child prostitution , known as the Eliza Armstrong Case (in German roughly "The Eliza Armstrong Case "). Stead published a series of highly controversial articles in the Pall Mall Gazette under the name The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon (" The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon "). He wanted to denounce child prostitution, which was not unusual at the time. Minors were trafficked in large cities like London in particular . To show the public how easy it was to buy a young girl, he arranged and wrote about such a deal.

William T. Stead in his prison uniform (1885)

With the help of Salvation Army member Bramwell Booth and Rebecca Jarrett, a brothel owner and former prostitute, he came into contact with 13-year-old Eliza Armstrong, whose penniless, alcoholic mother Elizabeth was in dire need of money. Jarrett organized a shop with Elizabeth Armstrong, whose daughter was supposed to work as a "housekeeper for an older man." Jarrett was convinced, however, that Elizabeth Armstrong knew full well that she was putting her underage daughter into prostitution . On June 3, 1885, Eliza Armstrong was sold for five pounds sterling . On the same day, Eliza was taken to a midwife and well-known abortion worker, who examined Eliza and confirmed her virginity . Then Eliza was taken to a brothel , where she was anesthetized with chloroform and was supposed to wait for the arrival of her buyer.

This turned out to be William Stead. Stead waited for Eliza to wake up. She screamed at the sight of him. Stead had seen enough. He immediately went home and started writing his articles. The series The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon proved to be unexpected commercial success. Even the offices of the Pall Mall Gazette were stormed by citizens wanting an issue. Second hand copies were sold for twelve times the price. Within a few days, Stead received numerous telegrams , some from overseas. Wanting to prevent a national scandal, the Home Secretary Sir William V. Harcourt asked Stead to stop publishing the articles, which Stead refused. He told the Pall Mall Gazette to keep printing until it ran out of paper.

Although William Stead wanted to clear up with this action, he came on October 23, 1885 together with Rebecca Jarrett, the midwife Louise Mouret and the contact agent Bramwell Booth for kidnapping and pimping in court. Judge Richard Webster presided . Stead defended himself. He could not prove that Elizabeth Armstrong had knowingly given her daughter into prostitution. In addition, the arrangement had been made without the consent of the father, Charles Armstrong. Stead was sentenced to three months in prison, which he served first in Coldbath Fields Prison in London and then in Holloway Prison . For the rest of his life, William Stead was linked to this scandal.

Further career

In later years (1909)

Stead made a name for itself in yet another scandal. In 1886 the Crawford scandal became public in Great Britain. Parliamentarian and Privy Councilor Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke was accused of having had an affair with MP Donald Crawford's young wife for over two and a half years. This brought him before the divorce court in February 1886 and almost brought his career, which had been steep up until then, to a standstill. After Dilke's controversial discharge, Stead launched a campaign against him that made his political rehabilitation difficult. In 1887 he strongly condemned the reactions of the London police on the so-called Bloody Sunday . In Trafalgar Square , London , on November 13, 1887, left-wing groups came together to demonstrate for freedom of expression and against the restrictive policies of the Tories . The protest was bloodily suppressed by hundreds of police officers and bodyguards.

After Stead left the Pall Mall Gazette in 1889 , he founded the monthly journal Review of Reviews in 1890, which appeared in Great Britain, the United States and Australia until 1893 . From 1894 to 1897 he ran the spiritist journal Borderland , in which he gave free rein to his spiritist and psychological interests. He also became an enthusiastic supporter of the peace movement and pacifism . He was a close confidante of Cecil Rhodes , who designated him as one of his executors. He also found support from the women's rights activist Millicent Garrett Fawcett , who praised him for his performance after the Eliza Armstrong debate.

In 1893 he launched the Daily Paper , which was to be financed by borrowing from its own subscribers. The system did not work, however, and the Daily Paper never became more than a one-off addition to an edition of the Review of Reviews . In 1904 he tried a second attempt with a new concept, which again failed. After only six weeks the pressure was stopped. This caused Stead to have a nervous breakdown and almost resulted in his financial ruin. After this experience, he almost completely said goodbye to journalism.

William T. Stead and his wife Emma (undated).

Over the years, Stead cemented his reputation as a visionary and thought leader through many other publications on a wide range of topics such as The Truth About Russia (1888), If Christ Came to Chicago! (1894), Mrs. Booth (1900) and The Amercanization of the World (1902). As a peace fighter, he followed the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907 and published a daily newspaper for the last four months. In the Peace Palace of The Hague is today a bust of him. Stead was also an Esperantist and supported the Esperanto language in his Review of Reviews magazine . In 1910 and 1911 Stead led a campaign against the Italian policy of aggression in North Africa , which culminated in the Italo-Turkish War of 1911/12.

Esperanto

Stead had gotten to know Esperanto in 1902 in Leipzig, where an exchange of experiences took place on how to encourage pen pals between schoolchildren from different countries. The founder of the German Central Office for International Correspondence, grammar school teacher Martin Hartmann, showed Stead a French booklet with the basics of Esperanto and said that it was the future. Stead wrote about it in October 1902 in “The Review of Reviews” the article “Wanted: An International Language. A Plea for the Study of Esperanto ”with a presentation of the main features of Esperanto. From now on, half a page on Esperanto topics appeared in every issue of The Review of the Reviews. This was initially called "The Auxiliary International Language", then "The International Key Language", later "Learning Languages ​​by Letter-Writing".

Stead encouraged the formation of an Esperanto group in London and provided a room in "Mowbray House", where the editorial office was also located, which was called "The Sanctum" and could be used by groups for meetings that had no financial means Funds. He himself became the cashier of the newly founded London Esperanto Club. His publishing house produced and sold inexpensive textbooks and dictionaries, for which he placed advertisements in "The Review of the Reviews".

Stead took part in the major Esperanto congresses of his time, where he met pacifists from other countries, such as Alfred Hermann Fried , Henri La Fontaine and Gaston Moch . He was instrumental in organizing the third World Esperanto Congress in Cambridge in 1907. The participants were greeted in Esperanto by Sir Thomas Vezey Strong , an old friend of Stead who was later elected mayor and in his official capacity maintained contact with Esperantists abroad in his official capacity, for example during a visit to Prague in 1911 , at a reception in the City of London .

Many Esperanto magazines responded to Stead's tragic death with obituaries highlighting his active support for Esperanto.

spiritism

Stead was also very interested in spiritualism and claimed to be receptive to news from the spirit world and capable of the écriture automatique . His connection to the spirit world is said to have been the spirit of the American journalist and supporter of the abstinence movement Julia Ames , whom he met shortly before her death in 1890 , according to him. In 1909 he founded Julia's Bureau , where inquirers could get information from the media . In many of his spiritualistic writings, Stead published sketches of sinking ships or of himself drowning .

In general, Stead drew the picture of an approaching tragedy at sea . On March 22, 1886, he published a fictional article entitled How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic, by a Survivor ("How the mail steamer sank in the middle of the Atlantic, [report] by a survivor"). In it he described the sinking of an ocean liner after the collision with another ship and the high loss of life due to insufficient lifeboats . He came to the following conclusion: "That is exactly what can and will happen when ships with too few lifeboats put to sea". In 1892, Stead published a similar fictional story called From the Old World to the New , in which the White Star steamer Majestic picks up the survivors of another ship that sank after a collision with an iceberg .

Death on the Titanic

Commemorative plaque in Central Park, New York

In 1912, Stead was asked by US President William Howard Taft to attend a peace conference at Carnegie Hall in New York on April 21 . For this reason, Stead went on April 10, 1912 as a passenger in Southampton on board the RMS Titanic , which left on its maiden voyage to New York that day . He occupied a first class cabin on the C deck. After the Titanic collided with the iceberg in the late evening of April 14, Stead made no attempt to get into one of the lifeboats. However, he helped some women and children into the boats.

After all the boats were gone, he went to the first class smoking room on the A deck. There he was last seen reading a book while sitting in a leather armchair, completely calm. However, surviving first-class passenger Philipp Mock told a Worcester Telegram reporter that he had seen Stead on a life raft with John Jacob Astor . William Stead was killed in the sinking. His body was never found.

After his death, some of his followers in Chicago formed a spiritualist organization called the William T. Stead Memorial Center. The group published several books, for the most part written by journalist and writer Lloyd Kenyon Jones. The Churchill Archives Center in Cambridge now houses 14 boxes of William Stead's papers, including a diary from his 1885 imprisonment and correspondence with people such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , William Ewart Gladstone and Christabel Pankhurst . His papers are also kept in the Women's Library at London Metropolitan University .

Fonts

  • The war between labor and capital in the United States with a special relation to Chicago. Translated by Max Pannwitz. Stuttgart: Lutz, 1894.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paul Gubbins: 'Kaj en ondoj dronas ankaŭ verda stelo': WT Stead kaj ni , lecture at the British Esperanto Congress in Felixstowe, 2004. (Esperanto)
personal data
SURNAME Stead, William T.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stead, William Thomas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British journalist and editor
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1849
PLACE OF BIRTH Embleton (Northumberland) , Northumberland , England
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 1912
Place of death North Atlantic