Letters from W. T. Stead to Cardinal Newman

There are two letters on the Digital Collections, written to Cardinal Newman from W. T. Stead, in his capacity as editor of the Pall Mall Gazette.

Stead was a prominent nineteenth-century English journalist and a pioneer of the journalistic profession. He first began writing for newspapers in 1870 at1 the age of 21, and the following year was made editor of The Northern Echo, becoming the youngest newspaper editor in the country. In 1880 he joined the Pall Mall Gazette as assistant editor, becoming editor in 1883. It was in this role that he developed what was dubbed “The new journalism.” He introduced innovations that changed the news publishing world as he became a trail blazer in the field of investigative journalism and was frequently called “the greatest newspaperman of his age.”2

A close friend of General Gordon, Stead pressured the government to send Gordon to the Sudan to protect British interests in Khartoum. This move ultimately led to Gordon’s death in battle in January 1885, where he was famously found clutching an annotated copy of Newman’s Dream of Gerontius.3

Later in 1885, Stead began a national campaign to protect vulnerable children against exploitation, the result of which was the Criminal Law Amendment Act, nicknamed the “Stead Act.” This Act raised the age of consent from 13 to 16.4

In 1889 on resigning from the Pall Mall Gazette, Stead founded the Review of Reviews. In the 1890s he spent time in America, where he worked on social campaigns in Chicago. A prominent campaigner for peace, he was nominated for a Noble Peace Prize. In religion, Stead was a spiritualist and claimed to receive messages from the spirit world and to have the ability of telepathy. 5

On several occasions Stead wrote that he believed he would die either from lynching or drowning, and in April 1912, he boarded the ill-fated RMS Titanic on her maiden voyage, as a first-class passenger. Survivors recall that at the final dinner, he entertained fellow passengers with tales of the cursed mummy at the British Museum. Following the collision with the iceberg, Stead apparently busied himself helping women and children to the lifeboats and even gave his lifejacket to a fellow passenger. His body was never recovered, though one survivor did report seeing Stead and Jacob Astor following the sinking, clinging to a raft before they froze to death.6

Memorial plaques to Stead can be found in Central Park, New York and on Victoria Embankment, London.

1 Laurel Brake; Marysa Demoor (2009). Dictionary of nineteenth-century journalism in Great Britain and Ireland. Academia Press. p. 65.

2 Prévost, S., (2013) “W. T. Stead and the Eastern Question (1875-1911); or, How to Rouse England and Why?”, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 16. doi:

3 https://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/w-t-stead-the-review-of-reviews/the-great-pacifist/

4https://web.archive.org/web/20030212220646/https://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/V/victorians/hattersley.html

5 Janet Oppenheim (1988). The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914. Cambridge University Press. p. 34. 

6 https://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/w-t-stead-and-the-titanic/stead-and-astor-cling-to-raft/