The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon

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The loss of the Titanic has involved The Army in the loss of a true friend, for there is, alas! only too much ground for believing that W. T. Stead is among the lost… Bramwell Booth (War Cry, April 27, 1912)

Published in the Pall Mall Gazette in July, 1885, “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” was W.T. Stead’s highly scandalous expose of child prostitution. A tour de force of late nineteenth century prostitution, it exposed in graphic detail the entrapment, abduction and “sale” of young under-privileged girls to London brothels. Written in successive installments, Stead’s “infernal narrative”, as he called it, revealed to a respectable readership a criminal underworld of stinking brothels, fiendish procuresses, drugs and padded chambers, where upper-class paedophiles could revel “in the cries of an immature child…” Read More


The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon