.1/]" FATHER. 



459 



"which preceded it, yet all remained his 

 firm friends till the end. 



THE MAIDEN TRIBUTE. 

 I was too young to remember much 

 about the time of the Maiden Tribute 

 of Modern Babylon ; the series of 

 articles in which father exposed the 

 awful trade in girls carried on in Lon- 

 don. These were published in the Pall 

 Mall Gazette, and created the wildest 

 •excitement in London, and, indeed, 

 throughout England. They achieved 

 the object for which they were written, 

 and the age of consent was raised from 

 14 to 16. Copies of the paper contain- 

 ing these articles were sold for as much 

 as a sovereign apiece, so great was the 

 demand for them. Father's life was 

 threatened many times, and the wildest 

 untruths about him were set afloat, for 

 what he was doing meant the ruin of 

 many who were battening on this hor- 

 rible traffic. His friends finally induced 

 him to get a revolver, but he never car- 

 ried it, and, indeed, used it but once, 

 trying the penetrating power of the 

 bullet on two solid blue books in the 

 P.M.G. office in Northumberland-street. 



A MAFFICKING INCIDENT. 



Father was absolutely fearless, and 

 refused to take precautions. When 

 Mafeking was relieved, a mob invaded 

 his garden at Wimbledon, devastated it 

 and smashed a window in the dining- 

 room, but during the whole of that 

 period, when he was perhaps the most 

 execrated man in England, he never 

 hesitated to walk the mile from the sta- 

 tion, very often through a madly excited 

 crowd. It is astonishing that he came 

 through unharmed. He never allowed 

 the cracked window to be mended, con- 

 sidering it a useful reminder of the 

 fickleness and short-sightedness of the 

 public. 



THE TRIAL AT OLD BAILEY. 



Owing to a technical error in obtain- 

 ing the evidence he needed for his 

 Maiden Tribute articles, father was com- 

 mitted for trial at the Old Bailey. In 

 order to prove that girls could actually 

 be bought in London, a girl called Eliza 

 Armstrong was so purchased by father, 

 and promptly consigned to the care of 



a waitii er of the Salvation Army. 



The Army worked loyally with father 

 throughout, and the Chief-of-Staff — 

 now General Booth -had to stand his 

 trial with father as an accessory. The 

 error made was in not obtaining the con- 

 sent of both parents. I know of the 

 trial only from those who were present, 

 who sat near him during its course, and 

 heard his wonderful speech to the court 

 after the jury had brought in a verdict 

 of guilty.. Even Justice Lopez, hostile 

 though he was, in sentencing him to 

 three months' imprisonment, had to ad- 

 mit that his motives were commendable, 

 but that a technical breach of the law 

 had to be punished. Later it came out 

 that had Lord Russell, who defended 

 father, asked a question he suggested to 

 him, the whole prosecution would have 

 fallen to the ground. ft is significant 

 that those who brought the charge of 

 unlawful abduction never did anything 

 for the girl who was technically "ab- 

 ducted." ' She married, and after the 

 death of her husband a few years ago it 

 was to father she turned for help, not to 

 those who had used her in a futile at- 

 tempt to muzzle the man who was ex- 

 posing the infamous White Slave traffic 

 in the city. 



"A JOURNALIST?" 

 Father spent three days as a common 

 prisoner, but directly Lord Salisbury- 

 heard of this he had him shifted to Hol- 

 loway, where he served the rest of his 

 sentence as a first-class misdemeanant. 

 When he was examined as usual, on en- 

 tering gaol, he was asked his profession. 

 " Journalist," he said. " Oh," grumbled 

 the inspector, "they all say that. Can- 

 not you think of something better? 



OUR MUZZLED CHIEF. 

 We children used to visit him 111 Hol- 

 loway, ami looked forward to going to 

 his cell there. The Pall Mall staff gave 

 him a small model lion, about the size 

 of a collie dog, on which they affixed a 

 muzzle. It was taken down to him by 

 Mr. now Sir Henry Norman, in- 

 scribed, "To our muzzled chief." It 

 had a 'splendid roar, winch much de- 

 lighted us when we found it in Ins cell. 

 This [ion always stood in the hall of 

 his house ; it stands there now. 



