|
|
|
books
| book details |
Secrets of a Titanic Victim: The Story of the Real My Fair Lady
By (author) Gavin Weightman
| book description |
To mark the hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic Gavin Weightman has written an account of it most prominent victim and the scandalous crime that defined his life. The man was W. T. Stead, former editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, and easily the most notorious newspaper man of his generation, who was both idolised and despised for his campaigning style on both sides of the Atlantic. When the news broke that he had not survived the Titanic disaster the newspapers were filled with column inches about his exploits. None was more controversial than his abduction in 1885 of a thirteen year old London girl whom he arranged to have indecently assaulted and spirited away to France to be cared for by his friends in the Salvation Army. It was a stunt which shocked Parliament into raising the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen, where it remains today. A journalistic triumph, perhaps, but at what cost to a desperately poor London family and an entirely innocent cockney girl? Stead, along with others, was tried at the Old Bailey and sent to prison for abducting the girl and arranging for her virginity to be checked by a French abortionist. George Bernard Shaw, a book reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885 despised Stead for this journalistic stunt. With subtle satire he wove many of the details of the scandal into his play Pygmalion which he was finishing when the Stead obituaries appeared. Eliza, the girl Stead abducted, became the Eliza of My Fair Lady.
| product details |
Normally shipped |
Publisher | backstory
Published date | 23 Mar 2012
Language |
Format | Paperback
Pages | 182
Dimensions | 198 x 129 x 9mm (L x W x H)
Weight | 185g
ISBN | 978-0-9562-4621-9
Readership Age |
BISAC | history / social history
| other options |
|
|
|
To view the items in your trolley please sign in.
| sign in |
|
|
|
| specials |
|
An epic love story with the pulse of a thriller that asks: what would you risk for a second chance at first love?
|
|
|
|
Mason Coile
Paperback / softback
224 pages
was: R 520.95
now: R 468.95
|
A terrifying locked-room mystery set in a remote outpost on Mars.
|
|
|
|
