Status Updates From Charles Dickens and the Str...

The Victorian Age was named for the queen, but it was Dickens who captured it in print.

Dickens had requested a simple burial with no fuss. But the family bowed to the desire of the government to honor its most beloved writer, and he was buried in Poets’ Corner in London’s Westminster Abbey. For two long days mourners of every class filed past to view his coffin. Many threw flowers on it. Some were elaborate bouquets and others were bits of twigs and vine tied with rags.

When The Old Curiosity Shop was being published, the public started worrying that its sweet young heroine, Little Nell, was going to die. It’s said that readers waited on the docks in New York City for the boat bringing copies of the magazine with the next installment of the novel and, as the boat docked, shouted anxiously at passengers, “Is Little Nell dead?”

From the time Dickens started to write, England’s poor revered him for giving them a voice and status they’d never had before. He was their hero and spokesman. People could ignore blowhard politicians, but as Dickens had proved time and again, his writing had the emotional impact to inspire readers to work for change.

In 1844, Lord Shaftesbury, a powerful member of Parliament, a dedicated reformer, and a great admirer of Dickens’ writing, organized nineteen London schools into the Ragged Schools Union. Its goal was to reach the most needy slum children, including orphans and children whose parents either were in prison or were too drunk or too poor to care for them.

Hogarth filled his busy canvases with characters and stories. Dickens would study them a century later, learning how telling a small detail could be, and that a main plot could be enriched by dozens of supportive stories. That the artist dared satirize English society was also a strong influence on Dickens, who credited Hogarth as one of his inspirations for writing about “miserable reality” in Oliver Twist.

Dickens was outraged that the government offered no assistance, instead decreeing that the poor were the responsibility of church parishes. Every poor person knew to which church parish he or she belonged and what charity that parish offered. Parishes also operated workhouses to care for the poor who had nowhere else to go.