A century-old image of a former regional editor taken during a spell at Her Majesty’s pleasure in the late 1880s is coming up for auction next month.

WT Stead, The Northern Echo’s legendary news chief between 1871 and 1880, was sentenced to nine months in prison in 1885 for procuring and abducting a girl while editor of the Pall Mall Gazette in a bid to expose child prostitution.

His time in prison was the result of an act seen as both benevolent and sensationalist journalism.

For £5, Stead bought a 13-year-old girl called Eliza Armstrong from her mother and then instructed a doctor to check she was still a virgin.

But instead of seeking sexual gratification, he took the youngster to France where he held her for five weeks for her own safety and simultaneously recounted the tale in the Pall Mall Gazette.

Under titillating headlines such as ‘Strapping girls down’, the Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon series of article saw the Gazette’s sales rocket.

The powers-that-be in the capital were shocked that such depravity could take place and a Bill was rushed through Parliament raising the sexual age of consent from 13 to 16, ending juvenile prostitutes.

Stead was hailed as both a saint for exposing the scandal and a sensationalist who had used a 13-year-old for his own purposes.

Northern Echo deputy editor Chris Lloyd said: “Stead was the Northern Echo’s second ever editor and a pioneer of headlines and journalism.

“The ones for this particular story, which was a five-day series of articles, were wonderfully salacious – ‘The violation of virgins’ and ‘Confessions of a brothel keeper’.”

Stead was found guilty of abduction and incarcerated in Holloway Prison. Every 10 November he would go to work in his prison uniform as a proud celebration of what he had done.

His legend was cemented though when he was arguably to most famous person to drown on the Titanic in 1912.