William Thomas Stead

He married his childhood friend Emma Lucy Wilson on 10 June 1873. They had four sons and two daughters. In 1912, he got the invitation to speak at the international conference on world peace at Carnegie Hall.

He accepted the invitation and boarded the Titanic. According to the survivors of the ship, Stead helped several passengers of the ship to get into lifeboats and gave his life jacket to another passenger when the ship struck the iceberg.

It has been known that he made no attempt to save his own life and was last seen standing on the deck of the ship. His body was never recovered.

Born in Embleton, Northumberland, William Thomas Stead was the son of Rev William Stead, a Congregational minister and Isabella. In 1850, his family shifted to Howdon on the River Tyne.

He received his early education from his father at home. He learnt Latin and English when he was very young. In 1861, he attended Silcoates School near Wakefiled. After leaving this school in 1863, he started working as an apprentice in a merchant’s office on Quayside in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

In February 1870, he started writing articles for the “Northern Echo”, a newspaper. In the next year, he was appointed as an editor of this paper and he served in this position till 1880.

In September 1880, he shifted to London where he worked as an assistant editor of the “Pall Mall Gazette” under the editorship of John Morley. After Morley’s election as MP to the Parliament, Stead took the responsibility of the editor of that paper.

As an editor of the “Pall Mall Gazette”, he introduced several innovative changes for the improvement of this paper. It was Stead who introduced the concept of using of banner headlines and shorter paragraphs in the articles.

His application of illustrations, diagrams and maps made newspaper more attractive. As part of his innovative idea, he used to express his personal opinion while publishing the interviews of several well known persons.

During this time, “Pall Mall Gazette” started acting as an influential supporter of a number of political and social agenda. In 1883, his article “The Bitter Cry of The Outcast London” provided a detail description of the lifestyle of slum dwellers in London.

While exposing child prostitution in England, this influential newspaper editor staged the purchase of a girl, Eliza Armstrong. As its result, he was imprisoned for three months on charge of civil indictment.