‘Overrun with rats’: Charles Dickens Museum illuminates author’s factory stint

Dickens was taken out of school aged 11 to work in a London blacking factory as his father sank into debt

It was an experience that ruptured his childhood but shaped his life’s work. Two hundred years ago, 11-year-old Charles Dickens was taken out of school to work in a rat-infested factory on the banks of the Thames to support his family as his father sank into debt.

Now the Charles Dickens Museum in London is marking the bicentenary of the bleak period of the author’s childhood by displaying letters from his father that illustrate the difficulties in the father-son relationship.

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