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On the matter of William Thomas Stead …

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by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com | February 16, 2020

It is interesting to note Alfred Milner was one of the most –if not the most– powerful men on planet earth from the 1890s to the 1920s; and Stead was part of the Milner-Rhodes inner circle for a time.

While reading  ‘Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War’ by Gerry Docherty and Jim MacGregor, I discovered some interesting information on one of the main characters in Quigley’s Anglo-American Establishment. This person’s name is William Thomas Stead or W.T. Stead.

Stead was part of the Rhodes hidden circle of elites, who personally investigated and wrote four stories about child prostitution in his Pall Mall Gazette – this was an effort to pass the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, to increase the age of consent from 13 to 16.  After the Titanic hit an iceberg, survivor Philip Mock, saw Stead clinging to a raft with John Jacob Astor IV. “Their feet became frozen”, reported Mock, “and they were compelled to release their hold. Both were drowned.”

Stead meets Cecil Rhodes

From The Origins of the Deep State in North America by Matthew Ehret in The Duran (04 May 2019):  Stead was officially recruited to the  [Anglo-American Establishment‘s] grand design in 1889 which was instigated by Rhodes and his sponsor Lord Rothschild. It was when Stead had been recently released from prison due to his Gazette’s promotion of “organized vice” only to find his paper in serious financial trouble, when he was first called upon by Cecil Rhodes, a long time follower of his journal in South Africa. After their first meeting, Stead ecstatically wrote to his wife:

“Mr. Rhodes is my man! I have just had three hours talk with him. He is full of a far more gorgeous idea in connection with the paper than even I have had. I cannot tell you his scheme because it is too secret. But it involves millions. He had no idea that it would cost £250,000 to start a paper. But he offered me down as a free gift £20,000 to buy a share in the P.M. Gazette as a beginning… His ideas are federation, expansion, and consolidation of the Empire…. He took to me. Told me some things he has told no other man—save Lord Rothschild— and pressed me to take the £20,000, not to have any return, to give no receipt, to simply take it and use it to give me a freer hand on the P.M.G. It seems all like a fairy dream….”

Stead Investigates Child Prostitution and gets three months in Prison

Not only was Stead part of what Quigley called the Network, the Milner Group or the Round Table, Mr. Stead was editor of the Pall Mall Gazette and credited with creating a “new journalism” which demonstrated how the press could be used to influence public opinion and government policy, and he advocated “Government by Journalism”.

To this end, he wrote a scandalous four-part piece on human trafficking and child prostitution in a successful effort to raise the age of consent from 13 to 16.  His writings were  based -of course- on his own personal investigative research which earned him a three-month prison sentence for purchasing 13 year-old Eliza Armstrong  from her alcoholic mother without obtaining the permission of her father.  Note: Both Stead’s writings and the details of the Eliza Armstrong case can be purchased on-line.

Wikipedia: In 1893–94 Stead lived in Chicago for six months, campaigning against brothels and drinking dens, and published If Christ Came to Chicago.

“Nineteenth Precinct, First Ward, Chicago”, 1894 – map by Stead presenting 37 brothels, 46 saloons, 11 pawnbrokers

The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon

I’ve included some quotes from Stead’s The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon – Child Prostitution and Victorian Journalism below.

From Wikipedia: William Thomas Stead – The Pall Mall Gazette in July 1885 …

The disclosure proper began in the July 6 publication, in which Stead reveals that he had asked if genuine maiden virgins could be procured, and being told it was so, asked whether such girls were willing and consensual, or aware of the intentions planned for them:

“But,” I continued, “are these maids willing or unwilling parties to the transaction–that is, are they really maiden, not merely in being each a virgo intacta in the physical sense, but as being chaste girls who are not consenting parties to their seduction?” He looked surprised at my question, and then replied emphatically: “Of course they are rarely willing, and as a rule they do not know what they are coming for.” “But,” I said in amazement, “then do you mean to tell me that in very truth actual rapes, in the legal sense of the word, are constantly being perpetrated in London on unwilling virgins, purveyed and procured to rich men at so much a head by keepers of brothels?” “Certainly,” said he, “there is not a doubt of it.” “Why,” I exclaimed, “the very thought is enough to raise hell.” “It is true,” he said; “and although it ought to raise hell, it does not even raise the neighbours.”

“But do the girls cry out?” “Of course they do. But what avails screaming in a quiet bedroom? Remember, the utmost limit of howling or excessively violent screaming, such as a man or woman would make if actual murder was being attempted, is only two minutes, and the limit of screaming of any kind is only five… But suppose the screams continue and you get uneasy, you begin to think whether you should not do something? Before you have made up your mind and got dressed the screams cease, and you think you were a fool for your pains… Once a girl gets into such a house she is almost helpless, and may be ravished with comparative safety”.

Stead commented that “Children of twelve and thirteen cannot offer any serious resistance. They only dimly comprehend what it all means. Their mothers sometimes consent to their seduction for the sake of the price paid by their seducer. The child goes to the introducing house as a sheep to the shambles. Once there, she is compelled to go through with it. No matter how brutal the man may be, she cannot escape”. A madam confirmed the story for him, stating of one girl that she was rendered unconscious beforehand, and then coercively given the choice to continue or be homeless afterwards:

“I engaged her to be my little maid at the lodgings where I was staying. The very next day I took her off with me to London and her mother never saw her again. What became of her? A gentleman paid me £13 for the first of her, soon after she came to town. She was asleep when he did it–sound asleep. To tell the truth, she was drugged. It is often done. I gave her a drowse. It is a mixture of laudanum and something else. Sometimes chloroform is used, but I always used either snuff or laudanum. We call it drowse or black draught, and they lie almost as if dead, and the girl never knows what has happened till morning. And then? Oh! then she cries a great deal from pain, but she is ‘mazed, and hardly knows what has happened except that she can hardly move from pain. Of course we tell her it is all right; all girls have to go through it some time, that she is through it now without knowing it, and that it is no use crying. It will never be undone for all the crying in the world. She must now do as the others do. She can live like a lady, do as she pleases, have the best of all that is going, and enjoy herself all day. If she objects, I scold her and tell her she has lost her character, no one will take her in; I will have to turn her out on the streets as a bad and ungrateful girl. The result is that in nine cases out of ten, or ninety-nine out of a hundred, the child, who is usually under fifteen, frightened and friendless, her head aching with the effect of the drowse and full of pain and horror, gives up all hope, and in a week she is one of the attractions of the house.”

Stead quoted a former brothel-keeper who confirmed the nature of the trade:

“Maids, as you call them – fresh girls as we know them in the trade – are constantly in request, and a keeper who knows his business has his eyes open in all directions, his stock of girls is constantly getting used up, and needs replenishing, and he has to be on the alert for likely “marks” to keep up the reputation of his house. I have been in my time a good deal about the country on these errands. The getting of fresh girls takes time, but it is simple and easy enough when, once you are in it. I have gone and courted girls in the country under all kinds of disguises, occasionally assuming the dress of a parson, and made them believe that I intended to marry them, and so got them in my power to please a good customer. How is it done? Why, after courting my girl for a time, I propose to bring her to London to see the sights. I bring her up, take her here and there, giving her plenty to eat and drink–especially drink. I take her to the theatre, and then I contrive it so that she loses her last train. By this time she is very tired, a little dazed with the drink and excitement, and very frightened at being left in town with no friends…”

“I offer her nice lodgings for the night: she goes to bed in my house, and then the affair is managed. My client gets his maid, I get my £10 or £20 commission, and in the morning the girl, who has lost her character, and dare not go home, in all probability will do as the others do, and become one of my “marks”–that is, she will make her living in the streets, to the advantage of my house. The brothel keeper’s profit is, first, the commission down for the price of a maid, and secondly, the continuous profit of the addition of a newly seduced, attractive girl to his establishment. That is a fair sample case of the way in which we recruit. Another very simple mode of supplying maids is by breeding them. Many women who are on the streets have female children. They are worth keeping. When they get to be twelve or thirteen they become merchantable. For a very likely “mark” of this kind you may get as much as £20 or £40…”

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