Who Was Charles Dickens?

On Chandos Street in London, just northwest of Covent Garden’s bustling markets, Warren’s factory produced blacking paste, which was used for shoe polish. In 1824, there was a curious show in the window of Warren’s blacking factory. Ladies and gentleman were often drawn to the window to see it.

Two boys, one twelve years old, the other a little older, sat side by side. Their job was to seal and label the blacking jars. They worked six days a week for ten hours a day. The boys had to be quick to get their work done. To make the day interesting they’d made a game of it, competing to see who could be fastest. They were so speedy that people on the street stopped to stare at them.

The older boy was an orphan named Bob Fagin. He didn’t mind people watching him work. The other boy was Charles Dickens. For him, sitting in the window of Warren’s blacking factory was the worst thing he could imagine.

Charles dreamed of going to school, maybe even one of the great English universities like Oxford or Cambridge. He loved to read and sometimes even wrote stories of his own. John Dickens, Charles’s father, always spent more money than he earned. When John fell into debt, he could no longer afford his family of seven children. So Charles was taken out of school and sent to work. He was heartbroken and embarrassed. What if he spent his whole life trapped in a factory window, laughed at by people on the street? He couldn’t believe his parents had done this to him. He prayed to be “lifted out of the humiliation and neglect.”

When Charles grew up, he would write many stories about poor children living lonely, harsh lives. His stories would become some of the most widely read and beloved books in the world.

It wasn’t until after his death that people learned Charles Dickens was once one of those poor children, too.