Hollybush house

Home of reformer and journalist William Thomas Stead from 1895 to 1912. His book The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon which exposed criminal vice and child prostitution, an almost immediate consequence of which was the resurrection of the dormant Criminal Law Amendment Act which raised the age of consent to sixteen. As a result of his research for this book W.T. Stead was imprisoned for three months as the result of a civil indictment.

W.T. Stead lost his life in 1912, on a passage to America. It is reported that as his ship, the Titanic, sank he sat quietly reading a book in the First Class Smoking Room.

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