William Thomas Stead

William Thomas Stead (born July 5, 1849, Embleton, Northumberland, England—died April 15, 1912, at sea, North Atlantic) was a British journalist, editor, and publisher who founded the noted periodical Review of Reviews (1890).

Stead was educated at home by his father, a clergyman, until he was 12 years old and then attended Silcoates School at Wakefield. He became an apprentice in a merchant’s countinghouse and in about 1870 began to contribute to the Liberal daily newspaper Northern Echo at Darlington. The following year he was invited to become the Echo’s editor. He and the paper diligently supported Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone. In 1880 he went to London as assistant editor of the Pall Mall Gazette under John Morley, later Viscount Morley. When Morley went into Parliament, Stead succeeded him as editor and made of the Pall Mall Gazette a sprightly and unconventional journal. He introduced such modern journalistic techniques as the use of illustrations. He also developed the interview form in newspaper writing. His press campaigns effected many changes, including the improvement of British naval defenses.

In 1890 Stead decided to give up daily journalism in favour of the monthly journal he founded, Review of Reviews. He was known for his crusades in the journal’s pages on behalf of such diverse causes as British-Russian friendship, ending child prostitution, the reform of England’s criminal codes, and the maintenance of international peace. As editor and publisher of the Review of Reviews, he wrote on psychic phenomena, spiritualism, the “civic church,” and many other subjects. In 1894, Stead traveled to Chicago to attend the World’s Fair. He was horrified by the conditions he observed behind the glamour of the Fair and made a thorough investigation of the city’s underworld. His findings, published in If Christ Came to Chicago!: A Plea for the Union of All Who Love in the Service of All Who Suffer (1894), are recognized as a model of journalistic research. In 1904 Stead tried to found a newspaper, The Daily Paper, but it failed, and he narrowly avoided bankruptcy.

Stead was a passenger on the British transatlantic liner Titanic when the ship struck an iceberg and sank, and he was one of the approximately 1,500 passengers who perished.