To mark the hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic Gavin Weightman has written an account of it most prominent victim and the scandalous crime that defined his life. The man was W. T. Stead, former editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, and easily the most notorious newspaper man of his generation, who was both idolised and despised for his campaigning style on both sides of the Atlantic. When the news broke that he had not survived the Titanic disaster the newspapers were filled with column inches about his exploits. None was more controversial than his abduction in 1885 of a thirteen year old London girl whom he arranged to have indecently assaulted and spirited away to France to be cared for by his friends in the Salvation Army. It was a stunt which shocked Parliament into raising the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen, where it remains today. A journalistic triumph, perhaps, but at what cost to a desperately poor London family and an entirely innocent cockney girl? Stead, along with others, was tried at the Old Bailey and sent to prison for abducting the girl and arranging for her virginity to be checked by a French abortionist.
George Bernard Shaw, a book reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885 despised Stead for this journalistic stunt. With subtle satire he wove many of the details of the scandal into his play Pygmalion which he was finishing when the Stead obituaries appeared. Eliza, the girl Stead abducted, became the Eliza of My Fair Lady.
- ISBN10 0956246214
- ISBN13 9780956246219
- Publish Date 23 March 2012
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 15 April 2013
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint backstory
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 182
- Language English