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News feature
Exhibition remembers controversial campaign
BRITISH LIBRARY
A NEW exhibition highlights The Salvation Army’s role in exposing the scandal of child prostitution in the 1880s, reports Editorial Assistant George Tanton.
Titled Breaking the News, it features investigative journalist William Thomas Stead, whose campaign against sex trafficking in 1885 landed him in Holloway Prison. At the heart of the exhibition is Stead’s prison uniform, which was donated by the Army’s International Heritage Centre.
Stead’s imprisonment was due to his involvement with Bramwell Booth in ‘procuring’ 13-year-old Eliza Armstrong. Their stunt aimed to shed light on the scale of the child sex trade, particularly the trafficking of young girls, in late-Victorian London. This case, as well as Stead’s interviews with members of the police and brothel owners, eventually forced the debate to be heard in parliament. As a result, the age of consent was raised from 13 to 16 years of age under the Criminal Law Amendment Act.
The unorthodox role of Stead and The Salvation Army in exposing the extent of child prostitution was controversial. However, Stead had no professional or public setbacks because of his work and was hailed as a campaigner for social justice.
At the time of the Armstrong case, he was editor of The Pall Mall Gazette. He published his investigations and subsequent report into Eliza’s plight in a series of articles, titled ‘The maiden tribute of modern Babylon’.
‘I believe WH Smith refused to stock the newspaper because of his account,’ said Tamara Tubb, the Breaking the News exhibition curator. ‘However, it had the converse effect. It made public interest in the story even greater. The print run of The Pall Mall Gazette went up dramatically and people followed his subsequent court case avidly. In fact, there was a huge groundswell of public support for him. I believe The Salvation Army organised marches as well and they got a huge turnout for Stead’s campaign.
‘In my research here at the library, I spent a lot of time in the manuscripts room reading letters to and from Stead. There are copies of letters sent by the Pankhursts, the soon-to-be suffragettes, in support of his investigation.’
As an avid social reformer, Stead reported persistently on child welfare and reformation of the prison system in England. He spoke out against many of the government’s foreign and colonial policies, including the South African War of 1899 to 1902.
Stead’s prison uniform takes centre stage in the exhibition’s discussion on the ethical questions posed by investigative journalism. The exhibition examines how news has
Journalist William Thomas Stead Stead's prison uniform
been digested in Britain throughout 500 years of conflict and revolution, public outcry and scandal.
Stephen Lester, curator of newspaper collections at the British Library, explained that the exhibition provides ‘a range of different themes in the news, which connect historical and contemporary material together’. It tackles questions such as what it means to have a free press, what the ethical concerns are around producing the news and what is meant by objectivity.
‘The uniform is such a great visual representation of the consequences, or one side of the consequences, of Stead’s work,’ said Tamara.
