"The Street Children of Dickens's London" by Helen Amy

In many of Charles Dickens’s novels and stories, you’ll find street children. Oliver Twist may be the most famous of these stories, describing the band of young children organized by Fagin to be pickpockets and thieves.  

Dickens wasn’t writing in a vaccum or solely from his imagination. He was known for his long walks through London, including into areas like Whitechapel and the East End, which had hordes of children, some as young as toddlers, living on the streets. But it wasn’t just the East End; street children showed up wherever slums were to be found – the Strand, Seven Dials, and Westminster with a stone’s throw of the Abbey were famous, or infamous, for their slums.

 

British author and researcher Helen Amy tells the story of these children in The Street Children of Dickens’s London. She divides the narrative into two successive chronological periods – from 1837 to 1870, and from 1870 to 1900. The first period covers the adult life of Dickens; the second is focused on what was required to fully address and solve the problem. And solutions took decades. 

 

She sets the stage by describing life in Britain and London in 1830 and beyond. As agriculture became more mechanized and the Industrial Revolution reached its peak, hundreds of thousands of displaced rural workers crowded into the country’s cities, and especially London. Many were exploited by slumlords, with single rooms often housing 15 or more people. Added to that were the poor public health conditions – unsafe drinking water, untreated sewage dumped into the Thames River, and little money for nourishing food. It was often a public health catastrophe waiting to happen, and it did happen with plagues like cholera outbreaks. 

 

Helen Amy

Amy discusses the journalists and writers who covered the street children and the conditions they lived and worked in; Dickens was one of many. She explains who the street children were, how they made a legitimate living, how many turned to crime and prostitution, where they lived, and the first sputtering attempts to help them that eventually came to resemble crusades. And she also describes how the problem was eventually solved.

 

In addition to this book and Everyday Life in Victorian London, Amy has also published seven books on Jane Austen: the biography Jane Austen, Jane Austen in Her Own Words and the Words of Those Who Knew Her, Jane Austen’s England, Jane Austen’s Men, The Austen Girls, The Jane Austen Files, and The Jane Austen Marriage Manual. She received B.A. and M.A. degrees in history and literature. 

 

The Street Children of Dickens’s London is told straightforwardly and dispassionately, but it still is often an eye-opening shock. Using statistics, government reports, newspaper and magazine articles, and other sources, Amy paints a picture that is as heartbreaking as it is informative.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

The Threat of Free Speech, Yesterday and Today – Adam Tomkins at Law & Liberty on Jonathan Swift.

 

An Exclusive Jack Reacher Christmas Story – Lee Child at The Spectator.

 

A Wet January in the City, and the Festival of Britain – A London Inheritance.

 

Partings and Reminders – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian.