How I Know That The Dead Return
William Stead
eBook
(, July 12, 2014)
William Thomas Stead (5 July 1849 – 15 April 1912) was an English newspaper editor who, as a pioneer of investigative journalism, became a controversial figure of the Victorian era. Stead published a series of hugely influential campaigns while editor of The Pall Mall Gazette, and he is best known for his 1885 series of articles, The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, written in support of a bill to raise the age of consent from 13 to 16, dubbed the "Stead Act."Stead's 'new journalism' paved the way for the modern tabloid in Great Britain. He was influential in demonstrating how the press could be used to influence public opinion and government policy, and advocated "government by journalism". He was also well known for his reportage on child welfare, social legislation and reformation of England's criminal codes.Stead died when the RMS Titanic sank, and was considered to be one of the most famous Englishmen on board.Stead resigned his editorship of the Pall Mall in 1889 in order to found the Review of Reviews (1890) with Sir George Newnes. It was a highly successful non-partisan monthly. The journal found a global audience and was intended to bind the empire together by synthesizing all its best journalism. Stead's abundant energy and facile pen found scope in many other directions in journalism of an advanced humanitarian type. This time saw Stead "at the very height of his professional prestige", according to E T Raymond. He was the first editor to employ female journalists.In the 1890s, Stead became increasingly interested in spiritualism. In 1893 he founded a spiritualist quarterly, called Borderland, in which he gave full play to his interest in psychical research. Stead was editor and he employed Ada Goodrich Freer as assistant editor: she was also a substantial contributor under the pseudonym "Miss X". Stead claimed that he was in the habit of communicating with Freer by telepathy and automatic writing. The magazine ceased publication in 1897.Stead claimed to be in receipt of messages from the spirit world, and, in 1892, to be able to produce automatic writing. His spirit contact was alleged to be the departed Julia Ames, an American temperance reformer and journalist whom he met in 1890 shortly before her death. In 1909 he established Julia's Bureau where inquirers could obtain information about the spirit world from a group of resident mediums.Grant Richards said that "The thing that operated most strongly in lessening Stead's hold on the general public was his absorption in spiritualism".The physiologist Ivor Lloyd Tuckett wrote Stead had no scientific training and was credulous when it came to the subject of spiritualism. Tuckett examined a case of spirit photography that Stead had claimed was genuine. Stead visited a photographer who produced a photograph of him with an alleged deceased soldier known as "Piet Botha". Stead claimed the photographer could not of come across any information about Piet Botha, however, Tuckett discovered that an article in 1899 had been published on Pietrus Botha in a weekly magazine with a portrait and personal details.In the early 20th century Arthur Conan Doyle and Stead were duped into believing that the stage magicians Julius and Agnes Zancig had genuine psychic powers. Both Doyle and Stead wrote the Zancigs performed telepathy. In 1924 Julius and Agnes Zancig confessed that that their mind reading act was a trick and published the secret code and all the details of the trick method they had used under the title of Our Secrets!! in a London Newspaper.Ten years after the Titanic went down, Stead's daughter Estelle published The Blue Island: Experiences of a New Arrival Beyond the Veil, which purported to be a communication with Stead via a medium, Pardoe Woodman. In the book, Stead described his death at sea and discussed the nature of the afterlife.