The Pall Mall Gazette was an evening newspaper founded in London on 7 February 1865 by George Murray Smith; its first editor was Frederick Greenwood.

[4] Stead's editorship from 1883 to 1889 saw the paper cover such subjects as child prostitution; his campaign compelled the government to increase the age of consent from 13 to 16 in 1885.

This was one of the first examples of investigative journalism, and Stead was arrested for "unlawful taking of a child" (when he purchased thirteen-year-old Eliza Armstrong from her mother for the meagre price of £5, to highlight how easy it was to buy children).

Other contributors have included Anthony Trollope, Friedrich Engels, Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Whibley, Sir Spencer Walpole, Arthur Patchett Martin,[6] and Jamaican-born writer Eneas Sweetland Dallas.

The British Weekly, "one of the most successful religious newspapers of its time", followed stylistically in the footsteps of the Pall Mall Gazette, "including interviews of prominent personalities, use of line illustrations and photographs, special supplements, investigative reporting, sensationalist headlines, and serialised debates".