A ‘Twist’ in the tale – Dickens and the Cleveland Street Workhouse

Portrait of Dickens after he had become a famous author. Image property of Westminster City Archives.

There’s little more satisfying than to hear how research into Westminster in years gone by helps people make a difference to the city today.

If you caught Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday morning (18 February 2011, 7.41am), you may have heard historian Ruth Richardson being interviewed on a campaign to save the Cleveland Street Workhouse. The Workhouse is of considerable historical importance; a rare survival from the Georgian era, the old workhouse of St Paul Covent Garden was built in 1777, pre-dating the Brighton Pavilion. However, it is currently under threat of demolition as part of a ‘brownfield’ site development project.

Ruth has played a major role in strengthening the campaign through finding a new link between Charles Dickens and the Workhouse – a link that was discovered by delving into archives and historic collections.

It was already known that Charles Dickens was associated with the Workhouse in later life, through his correspondence with its medical officer, Joseph Rogers. However, it was not clear that Dickens had been strong associations with the Cleveland Street institution decades earlier, when he had written his famous exposé of the horrors of the workhouse system in Oliver Twist.

Hungerford Stairs, near the site of a blacking factory where Dickens worked as a boy. Image property of Westminster City Archives.

New historical evidence unearthed by the Cleveland Street Workhouse campaign team suggests that Dickens may in fact have had a personal knowledge of this particular workhouse from an early age. It was known that Dickens and his family had lived at 10 Norfolk Street in Marylebone when they first came to London in 1815, but numbering and street name changes had hidden just how near he was living to the workhouse. Now the influence of the workhouse on Dickens’ work has become even clearer: searching historic maps of London has revealed that the flat above the grocer’s shop at 10 Norfolk Street was a mere 9 doors away from the formidable Cleveland Street Workhouse!

Dickens’ father was always struggling to keep his family above the poverty line, and as a young boy Charles would have been well aware of the threat of life in the Workhouse. During his childhood he had also worked at Warren’s Blacking Factory, situated within the parish of St Paul Covent Garden. Undoubtedly a number of his fellow workers would have experienced the terrors of workhouse life first-hand, and may well have shared their stories with the young Dickens.

The evidence suggests that the workhouse scenes in Dickens’ Oliver Twist were inspired by his early life in the shadow of the Cleveland Street institution.

You can find out more about Dickens, the workhouse and the campaign to save it on the Cleveland Street Workhouse website. It’s a nice example of how archives aren’t just about the past, but about how we relate to the London we live in today.

Do some historical detective work yourself by visiting us at Westminster City Archives.

[Judith]