When W.T. Stead opened the pages of the Pall Mall Gazette on the morning of 6 July 1885, I wonder if he had accurately guessed the extent of the public outcry that was about to greet his first instalment of ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’. Here, in lurid detail, Stead recounted his successful attempt at finding and procuring a young 13-year-old girl for sex. His readers were outraged. Stead exposed the horrors of child prostitution, from an alcoholic mother willing to sell her daughter for £5, to the drugging and removal of the child to a house of disrepute where she was left to await the mercies of her buyer. But why had he written it? Was it purely for sensationalism and to sell newspapers, or was there a more noble motivation?

Born in Northumberland in 1854, Stead became the editor of his first newspaper, The Northern Echo, at the tender age of 22 and quickly built a reputation as a newspaper man. He wrote in a style which Matthew Arnold, noted poet of the time, christened ‘New Journalism’ – which was not the compliment it might sound. Arnold had been a previous contributor before Stead took over the editorship of the Pall Mall Gazette in 1883 and disliked the muckraking which Stead – and his readers – found so interesting. New Journalism, which was similar to the tabloid journalism of today, was seen as nothing more ‘than literary “eye-openers”, more or less vulgar, more or less lying’. But it was the investigation into child prostitution that would secure Stead’s position in the history books, and ‘The Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon’ would echo across the centuries and into the modern world.

Some say it was the influence of Charles Booth that directed Stead towards an exposé of child prostitution in the capital, but it was with the help of another Booth, Bramwell Booth, that Stead launched his investigation. Bramwell was the son of The Salvation Army founder, William Booth, and occupied the role of Chief of Staff in the organisation. It was to Bramwell that Stead turned to investigate the Victorian underbelly and find the connections that would lead to those involved in the trafficking of young girls.

Since the formation of The Salvation Army in 1865, Salvation Army members working in the East End regularly attempted to rescue young women and girls who had fallen into prostitution, and Booth and Stead manipulated those relationships until they found a woman who would provide them with the information they required. Rebecca Jarrett, a reformed brothel-keeper, agreed to aid them in their search and, after a while, located the Armstrong family and their 13-year-old daughter, Eliza. What happened next remains a mystery, but at some point, whether (as Eliza’s mother claimed) Rebecca offered Eliza a job in service, or (as Rebecca claimed) Eliza’s mother agreed to sell her daughter into prostitution, the sum of £5 changed hands and Eliza was then drugged and removed from her family.

Stead then claimed she was taken to a place to await his visitation so that the procedure of buying a young girl and removing her to a place of immoral actions could have been simulated. In ‘Modern Babylon’ Stead claimed he waited in the room with Eliza until she woke up and, on seeing him, she screamed. He then left the room and Eliza was taken by Rebecca to a respectable situation in Paris where she was cared for until the consequences of Stead’s articles became clear.

These took two forms: The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which had shown signs of wavering, was pushed through less than a month later by the public outrage that greeted Stead’s exposé. Created for the ‘protection of women and children’, the bill raised the age of consent from 13 to 16 and enforced harsh penalties against anyone involved in the procurement or transportation of young women for sex. It was a huge victory. But there was another, possibly unforeseen, consequence of the passing of the bill. It made all of Stead’s actions a criminal offence.