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Authors: Daniel Allen Butler
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article entitled “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon,” in which he described how for £5 he was able to purchase the services of a thirteen-year-old prostitute. The article resulted in Stead’s arrest and conviction on a charge of abduction, for which he was compelled to serve a brief prison term, but the resultant public outcry over his sensational revelation resulted in his quick release and a subsequent act of Parliament that raised the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen.
In 1890 Stead founded his own monthly journal, the Review of Reviews, and quickly made it one of the most influential publications of its day. He had interviewed Tsar Alexander III, Cecil Rhodes, Adm. John A. “Jackie” Fisher, and Gen. William Booth of the Salvation Army. He was a friend of men like Cardinal Henry Edward Manning and James Bryce, and even had lunch with the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII. His mission, as Stead saw it, was to champion all “oppressed races, ill-treated animals, underpaid typists, misunderstood women, persecuted parsons, vilified public men, would-be suicides, hot-gospellers of every sort and childless parents.” Short, ruddy-complected, with piercing blue eyes and a reddish beard, habitually dressed in tweeds, Stead presented almost a caricature of the quintessential English eccentric. “He was very nearly a great man,” Truth would later declare of him, “and certainly a most extraordinary one.” To T. P. Connor, he was “a Peter the Hermit preaching the Crusades out of his time.” Now he was in his sixty-fourth year, his energy still as boundless as ever, but an increasing fascination with spiritualism was slowly robbing him of his influence and eroding his credibility (he regularly communed with a spirit known only as “Julia.”) But even in decline, William Stead was still formidable. Even now he was traveling to New York, at President Taft’s personal invitation, to speak at a great international peace conference scheduled to open April 21. 8
Not all those aboard the Boat Train were wealthy or influential. In one of the Second Class cars, for example, Mrs. Allen Becker was keeping a careful eye on her three children, Ruth, Marion, and Richard. Ruth, a tall, pretty, but serious-looking girl of twelve, was less than thrilled at the prospect of another ocean voyage: she, along with her brother, sister, and mother, had just spent a month making passage from India. Allen and Nellie Becker were missionaries in India, and there all three Becker children had been born. But little Richard, just twenty months old, was a sickly child, and his parents had been told that the only way the boy would survive would be to take him away from the harsh Indian climate. So Mrs. Becker made arrangements for herself, Richard, Marion, who was just four, and Ruth to go home to Benton Harbor, Michigan. For her it would be a homecoming; for the children, America was a foreign land.
Another family traveling Second Class was Thomas William Brown, his wife Elizabeth, and their fifteen-year-old daughter Edith. Mr. Brown had been a real-estate broker and land speculator in South Africa. The Browns had left Capetown because the real-estate market there had gone into a serious decline and now were bound for Seattle, Washington. Traveling Second Class was something of a novelty for the Browns, who were affluent enough to travel First Class anywhere, but in this case there were no more First Class bookings available on the Titanic. 9
The Boat Train rolled out of London and through the slate-roofed, red-brick buildings of Surbiton, Woking, Winchester, Eastleigh, and Southampton ; a world that Stead knew intimately, but would have been completely alien to men like Astor, Hays, or Guggenheim. It was the world where the small businessmen, bank clerks, accountants, brokers, bookkeepers, merchants, and shopkeepers who worked in the city lived with their wives and families. They were men and women who guarded their social
In 1890 Stead founded his own monthly journal, the Review of Reviews, and quickly made it one of the most influential publications of its day. He had interviewed Tsar Alexander III, Cecil Rhodes, Adm. John A. “Jackie” Fisher, and Gen. William Booth of the Salvation Army. He was a friend of men like Cardinal Henry Edward Manning and James Bryce, and even had lunch with the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII. His mission, as Stead saw it, was to champion all “oppressed races, ill-treated animals, underpaid typists, misunderstood women, persecuted parsons, vilified public men, would-be suicides, hot-gospellers of every sort and childless parents.” Short, ruddy-complected, with piercing blue eyes and a reddish beard, habitually dressed in tweeds, Stead presented almost a caricature of the quintessential English eccentric. “He was very nearly a great man,” Truth would later declare of him, “and certainly a most extraordinary one.” To T. P. Connor, he was “a Peter the Hermit preaching the Crusades out of his time.” Now he was in his sixty-fourth year, his energy still as boundless as ever, but an increasing fascination with spiritualism was slowly robbing him of his influence and eroding his credibility (he regularly communed with a spirit known only as “Julia.”) But even in decline, William Stead was still formidable. Even now he was traveling to New York, at President Taft’s personal invitation, to speak at a great international peace conference scheduled to open April 21. 8
Not all those aboard the Boat Train were wealthy or influential. In one of the Second Class cars, for example, Mrs. Allen Becker was keeping a careful eye on her three children, Ruth, Marion, and Richard. Ruth, a tall, pretty, but serious-looking girl of twelve, was less than thrilled at the prospect of another ocean voyage: she, along with her brother, sister, and mother, had just spent a month making passage from India. Allen and Nellie Becker were missionaries in India, and there all three Becker children had been born. But little Richard, just twenty months old, was a sickly child, and his parents had been told that the only way the boy would survive would be to take him away from the harsh Indian climate. So Mrs. Becker made arrangements for herself, Richard, Marion, who was just four, and Ruth to go home to Benton Harbor, Michigan. For her it would be a homecoming; for the children, America was a foreign land.
Another family traveling Second Class was Thomas William Brown, his wife Elizabeth, and their fifteen-year-old daughter Edith. Mr. Brown had been a real-estate broker and land speculator in South Africa. The Browns had left Capetown because the real-estate market there had gone into a serious decline and now were bound for Seattle, Washington. Traveling Second Class was something of a novelty for the Browns, who were affluent enough to travel First Class anywhere, but in this case there were no more First Class bookings available on the Titanic. 9
The Boat Train rolled out of London and through the slate-roofed, red-brick buildings of Surbiton, Woking, Winchester, Eastleigh, and Southampton ; a world that Stead knew intimately, but would have been completely alien to men like Astor, Hays, or Guggenheim. It was the world where the small businessmen, bank clerks, accountants, brokers, bookkeepers, merchants, and shopkeepers who worked in the city lived with their wives and families. They were men and women who guarded their social
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