The ‘Maiden Tribute campaign’
Indeed, one of the first modern newspaper moral crusades, run in July 1885 by W. T. Stead, the editor of the London evening paper the Pall Mall Gazette, was on the evils of child prostitution. In a series of four articles, published in July 1885 under the sensational headline ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’, Stead sought to expose the prevalence of child prostitution in the heart of the empire. He explicitly intended to put pressure on the House of Commons, which was debating and threatening to defeat, for the third time, a Criminal Law Amendment Bill raising the age of consent from 13 to 16. Countless girls, Stead claimed, were being sacrificed to the insatiable ‘London Minotaur’ in a horror far worse than those recalled in myths of ancient Greece. Stead described this underground trade in considerable detail, explaining how often unsuspecting girls were lured to their ‘ruin’, and interviewing brothel-keepers, procurers and their victims to reveal all sides of the practice. Stead’s most daring tactic was to relay how he had been able to buy, with little difficulty, a 13 year-old girl, Eliza Armstrong, for £5. The series provoked a national uproar. While some newsagents refused to stock what they regarded as an ‘obscene’ publication, there were riots outside the paper’s offices as vendors fought to get hold of extra copies. Thousands of unofficial reprints circulated around London, and the stories were spread around Europe and the United States. The matter was raised in Parliament, where the revelations changed the dynamics of the debates on the Criminal Law Amendment Bill. Stead himself was eventually prosecuted for his part in the purchase of Armstrong and he served three months in Holloway Prison. He was unbowed on release, convinced of the justice of ending what he saw as a ‘conspiracy of silence’ surrounding the subject. The eventual passage of the new legislation, which also increased police powers over brothels, seemed to testify to the power of his crusading journalism.
This campaign showed that the press could generate significant political and public debate about the sexual exploitation of children. Stead deployed a shrewd combination of melodrama, titillation and moral seriousness to capture readers’ attention, framing the problem as one with a clear enemy – the ‘dissolute rich’ – and practical solutions, namely raising the age of consent and tackling brothel owners. The combination of press interest, active campaign groups, such as the NSPCC and the National Vigilance Association, and reform-minded politicians, kept the issue on the public agenda for some years, resulting in legislation such as the Punishment of Incest Act of 1908. This momentum was, however, difficult to sustain. Women’s organisations tried to maintain the pressure for reform after 1918, but the climate they faced gradually became less hospitable, and press and parliamentary support was hard to find.

The ‘Maiden Tribute campaign’
Indeed, one of the first modern newspaper moral crusades, run in July 1885 by W. T. Stead, the editor of the London evening paper the Pall Mall Gazette, was on the evils of child prostitution. In a series of four articles, published in July 1885 under the sensational headline ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’, Stead sought to expose the prevalence of child prostitution in the heart of the empire. He explicitly intended to put pressure on the House of Commons, which was debating and threatening to defeat, for the third time, a Criminal Law Amendment Bill raising the age of consent from 13 to 16. Countless girls, Stead claimed, were being sacrificed to the insatiable ‘London Minotaur’ in a horror far worse than those recalled in myths of ancient Greece. Stead described this underground trade in considerable detail, explaining how often unsuspecting girls were lured to their ‘ruin’, and interviewing brothel-keepers, procurers and their victims to reveal all sides of the practice. Stead’s most daring tactic was to relay how he had been able to buy, with little difficulty, a 13 year-old girl, Eliza Armstrong, for £5. The series provoked a national uproar. While some newsagents refused to stock what they regarded as an ‘obscene’ publication, there were riots outside the paper’s offices as vendors fought to get hold of extra copies. Thousands of unofficial reprints circulated around London, and the stories were spread around Europe and the United States. The matter was raised in Parliament, where the revelations changed the dynamics of the debates on the Criminal Law Amendment Bill. Stead himself was eventually prosecuted for his part in the purchase of Armstrong and he served three months in Holloway Prison. He was unbowed on release, convinced of the justice of ending what he saw as a ‘conspiracy of silence’ surrounding the subject. The eventual passage of the new legislation, which also increased police powers over brothels, seemed to testify to the power of his crusading journalism.
This campaign showed that the press could generate significant political and public debate about the sexual exploitation of children. Stead deployed a shrewd combination of melodrama, titillation and moral seriousness to capture readers’ attention, framing the problem as one with a clear enemy – the ‘dissolute rich’ – and practical solutions, namely raising the age of consent and tackling brothel owners. The combination of press interest, active campaign groups, such as the NSPCC and the National Vigilance Association, and reform-minded politicians, kept the issue on the public agenda for some years, resulting in legislation such as the Punishment of Incest Act of 1908. This momentum was, however, difficult to sustain. Women’s organisations tried to maintain the pressure for reform after 1918, but the climate they faced gradually became less hospitable, and press and parliamentary support was hard to find.