He was from Cambridge House, Wimbledon Park, London SW and 'Holly Bush', Hayling Island, Hampshire was a well known journalist and author. Stead was born in Manse, Embleton, Northumbria on 5 July 1849, he was the son of Rev. W. Stead a congregational minister and Isabella, daughter of John Jobson a Yorkshire farmer. Until his death Stead continued to preach 'peace through arbitration' and when he boarded the Titanic in Southampton he was travelling to America to take part in a peace congress at Carnegie Hall on 21 April at the request of the president William Howard Taft.