19 September 2012

W. T. Stead on Victoria Embankment: London #34

 
This striking plaque is in front of HQS Wellington on Victoria Embankment, and bears the following breathless praise:
 
'W. T. STEAD

1849 – 1912

THIS MEMORIAL TO A JOVRNALIST
OF WIDE RENOWN WAS ERECTED
NEAR THE SPOT WHERE HE WORKED
FOR MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS BY
JOVRNALISTS OF MANY LANDS IN
RECOGNITION OF HIS BRILLIANT GIFTS
FERVENT SPIRIT & VNTIRING DEVOTION
TO THE SERVICE OF HIS FELLOW MEN'
 
These words initially seem to suggest a slightly different view from W. Sydney Robinson's biography of Stead: Muckraker: The Scandalous Life and Times of W. T. Stead: Britain's First Investigative Journalist (2012), and this suggestion would appear to be given more credence by the first two sentences of the publisher's blurb:
 
'First rocketing to fame when he 'purchased' a 13-year old girl as part of a campaign against child prostitution, W. T. Stead was the pioneer of investigative reporting. As criminal convict, Puritan, sex-fanatic, occultist, social reformer and stuntman, Stead's notoriety escalated throughout his life until his tragic death in the Titanic disaster. '
 
But then, Robinson in his Foreword calls him 'arguably the most important journalist of all time'. This sounds like a very interesting read – I shall have to find time for it.


2 comments:

e.f. bartlam said...

I wrote about the Pro Boers in graduate school. Stead's name came up...a lot.

He was a character.

Dr Tony Shaw said...

By coincidence, I'm now reading a novel by C. K. Stead.