The Northern Echo was first published on this day. Its most famous editor was William Stead (1849-1912), who, aged 22, became the youngest newspaper editor in the country, and is remembered today as one of the chief pioneers of investigative journalism.
You wouldn't think you'd have to be much of a rebel to campaign against child prostitution, but his successful efforts to get the age of sexual consent for girls raised from 13 to 16 (wokism gone mad!) ended with Stead serving three months in prison.
As an editor, Stead supported many radical causes, including compulsory education, votes for men and women, home rule for Ireland, world peace, and a shortening of the working day for coal miners. He combined crusading journalism with a revolutionary use of pictures, headlines, columnists, interviews and features which is still familiar today, and which was intended to make the papers he ran "lively, amusing and newsy."
It was his "Maiden Tribute" campaign of 1885, while editing the Pall Mall Gazette (where he offered equal employment opportunities to both sexes) which led to both his greatest political triumph and his downfall.
Stead's Christian faith drove his belief that popular journalism was a sacred power "placed in my hands to be used on behalf of the poor, the outcast and the oppressed." It outraged him that the "daughters of the poor" were being abused by wealthy gentlemen in a system of prostitution he described as the "London Minotaur."
The ruling classes, and their tame press, never forgave him for his agitations, and for forcing them to change the law, and Stead's own actions gave them their opportunity for revenge. Unwisely (not to mention unethically) he had "bought" a 13-year-old virgin, to show how easily it could be done. He was tried for abduction, and convicted on a technicality. In later years he would always wear a prisoner's uniform on the 10th of November, to mark the anniversary of his conviction.
W.T. Stead died on the Titanic, last seen helping others to board lifeboats as he remained on deck. Years earlier he had campaigned for ocean liners to carry more lifeboats. (Health and safety gone mad!)
*
Sources:
https://co-curate.ncl.ac.uk/northern-echo/
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
A people's history of classics by Edith Hall & Henry Stead (Routledge, 2020) www.carolynkirby.com/post/the-maiden-tribute-scandal