Explore A Different Side Of London With A Charles Dickens Tour
Although Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812, London was the City that both shaped and haunted his imagination.
He arrived here as a very small boy, during which time, his father, John Dickens, who worked as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, developed a taste for living well beyond his modest means.
When Charles was around five years old his father was transferred to Chatham in kent and the young boy embarked upon what he later described as the happiest years of his childhood.
But all this came to an abrupt end when Charles had just turned twelve and his father was transferred back to London. His spending spiralled out of control and he was arrested for debt and imprisoned in the Marshalsea Debtors Prison in Southwark.
Southwark, London, UK
The rest of the family moved into the prison with him with the exception of Charles and his sister, Fanny.
Charles was sent to work at the Warren’s Blacking factory (shoe polish manufacturers) where he was employed in the menial task of sticking labels on to tins of boot polish.
It was work that he hated and work that he detested and he found himself completely abandoned by his parents. He was found lodgings on his own (remember he was just a boy of twelve years old) and, left to his own devices he walked all over London, visiting and absorbing the atmosphere and aromas of every neighbourhood.
He didn’t know it then, indeed he couldn’t have known it then, but he was receiving a first rate education for his later career. Because he learned everything there was to learn about the Victorian Metropolis of which he was destined to become the undisputed chronicler of.
His time in the blacking factory proved useful in another respect. One of his best friends whilst working there was an older boy who really did look out for and after Charles Dickens. And how did Dickens repay the kindness shown him by this older boy? He later immortalised him in one of his most famous works Oliver Twist. The boy’s name was Bob Fagin and when, later on, the adult Dickens was looking for a good name for his villain he remembered his days at the blacking warehouse and used Bob Fagin’s name.
