On an August Friday in 1888, with the temperature at 80o in the shade, two seemingly mismatched friends met up in London.  The older of the two, William Richard Hughes, was in his late fifties, while the younger, Frederic George Kitton, was in his early thirties.  Hughes was an important financial official, the Treasurer of the City of Birmingham.  Kitton …

Those present at the Clerkenwell Police Court on Saturday the 13th of May 1871 probably sighed inwardly when the case against Leonard Albert Cambray was called.  Yet again a member of the working classes had drunk too much and attacked his wife.  For the forward thinking the only way of ending this vicious cycle was to encourage temperance, educate the …

In June 1839 a curious—and rather unfortunate—incident at the Surrey Zoological Gardens in Newington caused a bit of a stir. One or two newspapers devoted a short paragraph to it, which would have engendered both alarm and pity in their readers.  The incident—or should we think of it as a drama?—had three principal actors.  The first was the superintendent of the …

The prestigious chocolatiers Charbonnel et Walker have been in business since 1875; now their flagship shop can be found at One, The Royal Arcade — the end that opens on to Old Bond Street end.  But who were Charbonnel and Walker?  A quick look on the company’s website will tell you that the founders — Mademoiselle Charbonnel and Mrs Walker …

Although Mrs Jane Carolan had not wanted to take a lodger, at least it was some comfort to her that the young man occupying a room in her house at 16 Union Road in Clapham was respectable.  A solicitor’s clerk, he was always well-dressed and he seemed intent on self-improvement, if the large number of library books he borrowed was …

The master of the workhouse in Chapter Two of Oliver Twist is one of the most unforgettable characters in nineteenth-century literature.  From the moment he is introduced to us, serving gruel from the copper in his cook’s uniform, he does not stand a chance.  He is fat and healthy, where the inmates he reigns over are starving and scrawny.  His …

One of the most delightful items of Dickensiana to have come my way is the memoir of her father—My Father As I Recall Him—written by Mary “Mamie” Dickens.  The 1897 edition printed by the Roxburghe Press is a slim octavo, its blue cover adorned with a gold embossed image, the significance of which is explained by the author in Chapter …

If you read my recent piece on George Ruby, the crossing sweeper, and his relationship with the tragic Jo in Dickens’ Bleak House, you may well have wondered what life was really like for these poor wretches.  They qualify all too readily for the title of overlooked Londoner.  And yet there was one particular crossing sweeper about whom we know …

On the 20th of August 1838 a young man stood in the dock at the Old Bailey.  His name was John Vivian, and he was twenty-four years old.  He was five feet eight inches in height, and of slender build.  The charge was burglary, and the inventory of stolen goods was pretty impressive.  Eighteen spoons worth £9 10s.  Sixteen forks …

The story of Jo, the crossing sweeper in Bleak House, is one of Charles Dickens’s most searing indictments of child poverty.  Jo exists at the very edge of human society, with no family and no home, relying on the charity of strangers.  Utterly marginalised, his ignorance is so profound that he sees nothing odd in having only one short name.  …