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Charles Dickens - Early Days in London
"It is a silent, shady place" - (Charles Dickens, Master Humphrey's Clock)
Charles Dickens is forever linked to London. He wasn’t born there, he didn’t die there, and his entire life wasn’t spent there. His association as a Londoner is through his many novels dealing with the squalor, hardships, and everyday life of the underworld in Victorian London.
Born on the 7 February, the second child of eight, to John and Elizabeth Dickens at Portsea, a suburb of Portsmouth. John was a clerk in the navy pay-office attached to the dockyard. At the age of three, Charles and the rest of the Dickens family moved to London. Their first family home in London was at Number 10 Norfolk Street, present day 22 Cleveland Street, where they were to spend the next two years.
The house where young Charles spent his first two years in London has no blue plaque. It stands on the corner of Tottenham Street and Cleveland Street, in an area known today as Fitzrovia. You could linger inside this building for the price of a cup of tea and a sandwich.
You could be forgiven for wondering why the present owner chose to name the establishment Café Sandwich Bar, instead of capitalising on the Dickens name. The most likely reason for this, unawareness of the famous Victorian authors residency here.
Just two years after moving into London's Cleveland Street, John Dickens was posted to the Kentish Dockyards of Chatham. Charles first glimpse of London was brought to an end.
The next time the young Dickens set eyes on London was in the winter of 1822-23, when his father took the smallest house in a street within the poorest part of London, 16 Bayham Street, Camden Town. Nothing of this property has survived except for the description of the Cratchits' home in A Christmas Carol, where it is undoubtedly modelled from.
His sister Fanny was at this time beginning her four years of study at the Royal Academy of Music, whilst Charles felt his own dejection of a good education.
The family then moved into 4 Gower Street North, where Dickens mother tried to help with the family finance by opening a school; a large brass plate on the door announced MRS. DICKENS'S ESTABLISHMENT. Unfortunately nobody ever came and John Dickens was soon incarcerated within the walls of the Marshalsea Prison for debtors.
 The one remaining wall of the Marshalsea Prison
It was during 1824 whilst John Dickens imprisoned behind these walls for about eight months, most of that time accompanied by his family (with the exception of Charles).
Charles, 12 year old at the time, broke down in tears from his despair and rented lodgings are found for him in an attic at nearby Lant Street. Living closer to the prison he is able to have breakfast and supper with the rest of the family.
The house in Lant Street belonged to the Vestry Clerk of St George's Church, and has long since gone with only this blue plaque on the site now occupied by a school.
With the sudden death of Elizabeth Dickens, paternal grandmother of Charles, John Dickens hereby inherits £:450 and is subsequently released.
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