The Guiding Brain and Directing Hand: Human Interest Reporting and the Power of the Press in W.T. Stead's Pall Mall Gazette by Lauren Frost Common,BA. A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of History Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario August 2,2005 © copyright 2005, Lauren Frost Common Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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Abstract This thesis examines the efforts of W.T. Stead to increase the power of the British press through human interest reporting. Stead believed that newspapers constituted significant institutions of power, equal to the traditional institutions of government and church, and that their rightful role in society was to criticise injustices and inspire change through the direction of public opinion. This study examines Stead's editorial theory, based on his self-reflective writings on journalism, and how that theory was put into practice in two particular episodes of his career at the Pall Mall Gazette, the London newspaper that he edited from 1883 to 1889. The episodes examined are Stead's involvement in General Charles Gordon's 1884 expedition to Khartoum and the famous "Maiden Tribute of Modem Babylon" expose of child prostitution in London. iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people for their contributions to my studies over the last two years: My thesis supervisor, Dr. Pamela J. Walker, for her guidance on everything from the historiography of "The Maiden Tribute of Modem Babylon" to the best place to eat lunch near the British Library. Dr. Mark Phillips, for his advice and encouragement, and Dr. A.B. McKillop, in whose class I discovered press history. The staff of the British Library, the staff of the Women's Library at the London Metropolitan University, the archivists of the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne's Special Collections, the librarians at Carleton University's Interlibrary Loans office, and Joan White, the Graduate Secretary of Carleton University's Department of History, all of whom contributed to making the process so much easier and more enjoyable than I had expected it to be. My friends Jaq Delaney, whose generosity allowed me to spend an unbelievable month buried in the archives of Britain, and Marie-Claude Danis, who has been unfailingly supportive. My grandparents, great-aunts and uncles, regular aunts and uncles, and cousins, who always ask how my studies are coming along and are genuinely interested in the answer. My parents, Ron Common and Lorraine Frost, whose love and unwavering faith in me have given me the confidence to do what I have, and whose example I try always to live up to. Finally, Mackenzie, who is my sister and my best friend. iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents Page Abstract iii Acknowledgements iv Table o f Contents v Frontispiece vi 1. Introduction: The Victorian Press and W.T. Stead \ 2. Be Bold and Again Bold and Always Bold: W.T. Stead's Editorial Theory and the Ideology of Human Interest Reporting 29 3. Great and Greater Britain: Indirect Power of the Press and the Construction of an Imperial Hero 6 5 4. The Devil's Shilling: Celebrity Journalism and the Hero's Perspective in "The Maiden Tribute of Modem Babylon" 1 02 5. The Unsinkable Titan: Remembering W.T. Stead 1 4 5 Bibliography \ 5 9 V Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "If any of my agents did not execute my instructions that of course is another matter. But if it be that in the execution of my instructions they have transgressed unwittingly the law which we were seeking to strengthen, I would pray that the sole punishment should fall upon me. But if Your Worship considers that you must commit the case for trial, I beg of you to remember that mine was the guiding brain and this the directing hand which alone is responsible for what was done." - W.T. Stead's suppressed statement of defence, "The Eliza Armstrong Case," Pall Mall Gazette Extra, 30 October 1885, 93. vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1. Introduction: Historiography of the Victorian Press and W.T. Stead When Lucy Maynard Salmon published The Newspaper and the Historian in 1923, she did so with the aim of educating historians about the value and limitations of newspapers as sources. Salmon, then a history professor at Vassar College and the author of a number of books on American history, was writing at the end of an era that had seen an explosion in newspaper production, both in North America and in Europe. Advancements in printing technology over the course of the nineteenth century had made printing faster and much less expensive than had ever been the case before, allowing for the development of newspapers as the first mass media. At the same time, social and economic developments, such as increased literacy levels and the rise of a middle class, led to an expansion of the potential readership base. Newspapers, Salmon asserts in the introduction of The Newspaper and the Historian, can be of great value to historians, provided they are used with care. Although they lack the "veracity and trustworthiness " 1 of government or legal documents, newspapers give the historian an otherwise unattainable glimpse at "the spirit of a time or locality." 2 In the five hundred pages that follow, Maynard attempts to describe for historians the complexities of newspapers and other similar forms of periodical literature. Maynard's discussion of subtleties of press publications is sophisticated for her time; her treatment of issues such as the implications for historians of collective or anonymous authorship in nineteenth century newspapers would not seem out of place if 1 Lucy Maynard Salmon,The Newspaper and the Historian, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1923), xli. 2 Ibid., xli. 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 put into a collection with press histories published in the 1980s. There is, therefore, a certain irony in the fact that Salmon does not discuss the value and interest of the press as a subject of historical inquiry in and of itself, despite the fact that The Newspaper and the Historian is precisely that: an extended study of the history of European and North American newspapers that traces public communication from the Greek and Roman eras through to the 1920s. Rather, Salmon is merely attempting to address the question with which she concludes her introduction: "What then is the newspaper and to what extent can it serve the historian?" In other words, how might newspapers be used by historians towards the research of subjects other than the press? Salmon's The Newspaper and the Historian embodies the two ways in which historians approach newspapers, viewing them either as a source for or as the subject of their research. The book is a guide for historians seeking to use newspapers as sources for research. At the same time, The Newspaper and the Historian treats the press as the subject. The historians who fall into the former category are as varied as the actual subjects of their research. Historians who are studying the history of the press, however, particularly those focusing on the press of the late nineteenth century, fall into one of two categories: those writing institutional histories, which focus on the development of the institutional framework surrounding the press, and those writing textual histories, which examine changes in the form of the publications under consideration.