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The Maiden Tribute of Babylon: Part One

© Viola Ashford

"Those who have not been in prison will understand it when they in their turn receive sentence of imprisonment. It is a feel of stone and iron, hard and cold, and, when, as in Newgate, the prison is empty, there is added the chill and silence of the grave." These are lines written by W.T. Stead, the famous journalist, when he was sentenced to prison for two months for the procurement and abduction of a child, Eliza Armstrong. Assistant editor of The Pall-Mall Gazette in London, Stead wanted to expose the dark underworld of London in which children were commonly abducted and sold to brothels frequented by upper-class men. If he could change the age of consent to 16 instead of 13 he had a good chance of stopping this shocking 'white slavery'.

W.T. Stead became the youngest editor in England at the age of 22 when he was appointed editor of The Northern Echo. The son of a Congregationalist minister he believed in social improvement and reform although his articles tended to be sensationalist. Feminists like Josephine Butler and the Salvation Army had agitated for a bill to be passed in Parliament to change the law of consent but with little luck. Benjamin Scott, chamberlain of the city of London, went to see W.T. Stead and told him lurid stories about child prostitiution.

W.T. Stead and his friends from The Salvation Army decided to expose this evil once and for all and in 1885 he wrote a series of articles entitled "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon." These articles shocked England although they were somewhat prurient in nature leading to suspicion of Stead's motives. In his articles he exposed the fact that even some legislators practiced the trade. He also denounced the doctors who pronounced the girls virgins thus securing a higher price for them.

In one of his articles he told the story of 'Lily' who was abducted, drugged and suddenly found herself in a brothel. 'Lily' was really Eliza Armstrong who Stead had bought from her alcoholic mother for five pounds. As Stead did not have the consent of her father or written evidence of his arrangement with the mother who argued that she thought the girl was going to be a maid, he was sent to jail. The real reason was that certain people amongst the Establishment did not like the fact that. Stead had written the truth.

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