The material for his books was drawn from life—­from his own and from the lives of those around him—­and for this reason all that he wrote will always be of great value, as it gives us a good idea of the Early and Mid Victorian days.

His ambition was to strike a blow for the poor, “to leave one’s hand upon the time, lastingly upon the time, with one tender touch for the mass of toiling people.”

Who can ever forget in the Christmas Carol the crippled Tiny Tim, “who behaved as good as gold and better.  Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard.  He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”

Other pictures of suffering childhood are ‘Little Nell’ and ’The Marchioness’ in The Old Curiosity Shop, ‘Jo’ and ‘Charley’ in Bleak House, and ‘Smike,’ the victim of the inhuman schoolmaster ‘Squeers.’

The cruelty of the times is shown in the case of an unfortunate sempstress who tried to earn a living by making shirts for three-halfpence each.  Once, when she had been robbed of her earnings, she tried to drown herself.  The inhuman magistrate before whom she was brought told her that she had “no hope of mercy in this world.”

It was after hearing of this from Charles Dickens that Thomas Hood wrote the well-known “Song of the Shirt”: 

      Work—­work—­work! 
    From weary chime to chime,
      Work—­work—­work
    As prisoners work for crime! 
      Band, and gusset, and seam,
      Seam, and gusset, and band,
    Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumbed,
      As well as the weary hand.

The age might well take to heart the lesson taught by the great-souled writer—­that the two chief enemies of the times were Ignorance and Want.

The lot of the unfortunate children in the Union Workhouses was no better.  They were treated rather worse than animals, with no sympathy or kindness, owing to the ignorance of those who were set in authority over them.  Any one who reads Oliver Twist may learn the nature of the life led by the ‘pauper’ children in those ‘good old days.’

“The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out at once, what ordinary folks would never have discovered—­the poor people liked it!  It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round; a brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work.  ‘Oho!’ said the board, looking very knowing, ’we are the fellows to set this to rights; we’ll stop it all, in no time.’  So, they established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative