The Street of Disillusion

Inspired as a 15-year-old by a classic book, The Street of Adventure, Harry Procter had an ambition: to become a top reporter in Fleet Street. When he was 22 he had achieved that goal and was on the Daily Mail, scooping the nation with human interest stories and scooping the world covering a meeting between President Truman and King George VI on board a US battleship where he ingeniously contrived to be the only newspaperman present. Switching to the Sunday Pictorial he delivered more front page exclusives. From The Girl Who Married Her Brother to the death-cell revelations of notorious murderers, the world waited every weekend for his latest scoop and when anybody had a story the word was 'Tell Harry Procter about it.' Readers wrote to him in their thousands. Week after week he wheedled his way into the intimacy of the victims of sensational stories: the London call-girl syndicate, crooked financiers, phoney doctors, drug dealers, confidence tricksters, dishonest officials and crooked politicians... The paper's circulation rocketed. Harry Procter was giving millions of readers what they craved for - ever more salacious and sordid detail - until he became ashamed of supplying it. Disillusion had set in.