Denis J. Hickey tells the story of Charles Dickens – ‘The Christmas Man’

 

Charles John Huffham Dickens was born 7 February, 1812, at Landport, then a suburb of Portsmouth. He was the second child and eldest son in a family of eight. His father, John, a clerk in Chatham’s Navy pay office, was described by his son as, “A jovial opportunist with no money sense.” Dickens later portrayed him as Mr Micawber in David Copperfield.

His mother, Elizabeth (née Barrow), subsequently became both his Mrs. Nickleby and Mrs Micawber.

Two years later on 24 June, John Dickens received a London posting and the family moved to Norfolk St., St Pancras, London. In 1817 John Dickens was re-appointed to Chatham and the family settled at 2 Ordnance Terrace in the town.

1821 saw the young Charles Dickens commence his education at William Giles’ Chatham school. He also completed a tragedy, Misnar, the Sultan of India, about that time.
The family was forced to move in December 1822 when Dickens Senior was transferred to London. Charles rejoined his family in Camden Town later that month.

October 1823 saw the family in Gower St. North adjoining London’s Tottenham Court Road where Mrs. Dickens opened a school for young ladies – but no pupils enrolled.

John Dickens was arrested for debt in February 1824 and lodged in London’s notorious Marshalsea Gaol. Here, as was the custom, he was joined by his wife and family.
The imprisonment of his father forced twelve-year-old Charles to work in Warren’s Blacking Warehouse at 30 Hungerford St. on the banks of the Thames where he was paid six shillings (30p) per week for applying labels to shoe-polish tins and bottles.

He would later draw on his experiences in this vermin-infested workplace to describe Fagin’s den in Oliver Twist and also in his own favourite, David Copperfield.
Charles nightly walked the four miles to his Mrs Roylance Camden Town lodgings and on Sundays visited his imprisoned father.

The young Dickens later found employment as an office boy with the legal firm of Ellis & Blackmore in London’s Gray’s Inn during which he studied shorthand. He then joined Thomas Moore and Richard Brinsley Sheridan as a Parliamentary Reporter on William Woodfall’s Whig journal The Morning Chronicle.

Dickens later moved to lodgings at Lant St., Borough, near London’s Elephant and Castle.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own