Charles Dickens was born in 1812 into a relatively middle-class family and received a primary education. But then, when he was just twelve years old, everything changed. Charles’ father got into debt and was sent to Marshalsea Debtors’ prison in London. Charles had to leave school and went to work in a factory that made blacking. He spent ten hours a day there, sticking labels onto the pots of blacking. It was tedious work and the factory itself was dirty and infested with rats. In less than a year his father was released from prison after inheriting some money and Charles was able to leave the factory. But this early experience of poverty would have a huge impact on Dickens’ life and work. He saw for himself how poverty could destroy people’s lives and even lead them into crime.
The personal meets the political
When he was fifteen, Charles got a job as a clerk in a law firm. There he saw how the law often failed ordinary people. Throughout his novels he is highly critical of the law and lawyers. In 1834, when Dickens was twenty-two, a controversial law, the New Poor Law, was introduced by the British Parliament. It ruled that no kind of help would be given to poor people unless they agreed to enter a workhouse. The workhouses provided basic food and a place to sleep in return for long hours of hard labour. Families were broken up as men and women were kept separate. Charles knew from personal experience how easy it was to fall into poverty and he also knew that even the debtors’ prison at Marshalsea was not as desperate as the workhouse.
Social message
Dickens was so horrified by the injustice of the New Poor Law that he decided to protest in the way he knew best… through a story. In his famous novel Oliver Twist, published in installments between 1837 and 1839, Dickens describes young Oliver’s life in an orphanage, where the children are so hungry that one boy threatens to eat another! This leads to the famous scene where Oliver holds up his empty bowl and says: “Please Sir, I want some more.” Oliver eventually leaves the orphanage and joins a group of young pickpockets in London, who steal to stay alive. Dickens describes very graphically the terrible conditions being endured by poor people, especially children, in Victorian London, and the hypocrisy of many in authority.
The author's social portrait of Victorian London was so accurate that it became a benchmark. Today, when we speak of the injustice, extreme poverty and inequality that characterised life in the English capital in the 19th century, we refer to Dickensian London. It is a city that you can learn about in the article The London of Charles Dickens.
