Britain's first great investigative journalist William Stead (5 July 1849 – 15 April 1912) is to be honoured by The Chartered Institute of Journalists - to mark the 100th
anniversary of his death aboard the Titanic.Less well known is that William Stead was also a Spiritualist.
The Chartered Institute of Journalists is to honour Britain’s first investigative journalist - on the 100th anniversary of his death aboard the Titanic. President Norman Bartlett will lay a wreath at the memorial to W.T Stead on the Victoria Embankment in London on April 15.After his death on the Titanic, the Institute of Journalists launched an appeal to raise funds for a memorial. So much was raised that two memorials were erected, one opposite Temple Tube station and the other in Central Park, New York.
William Thomas Stead was acknowledged as Britain’s leading campaigning and investigative journalist in the late 1800s, particularly for his work in exposing the white-slave trade and child sex abuse in London’s brothels by the nation’s upper classes. This resulted in the passing of the Criminal Amendment Act which raised the age of consent from 13 to 16.
As part of his campaign, Stead “bought” a chimney sweep’s 13-year-old daughter (Eliza Armstrong) for £5 which earned him a three-month prison sentence. He continued to edit the Pall Mall Gazette (which later merged into the Evening Standard) from his prison cell.
Stead was a pacifist and peace campaigner and started a Spiritualist quarterly magazine called Borderland.
Before Stead boarded The Titanic, he said 2 spiritualist friends had warned him the journey would not end well but Stead dismissed their fears stating that whatever was to come, he could not avoid fate.
Throughout his life he claimed he would either die by lynching or drowning. When the iceberg struck the Titanic in 1912, Stead is said to have assisted women and children into the lifeboats and then retired to the sitting room to smoke a cigar and read a book.
