#charles-dickens

#charles-dickens

Author's experience as a child labourer shaped his novels and social commentary within his works For Charles Dickens, his distaste of poverty and inequality was not born out of some distant observations of the society of his time, but from his lived experience within it. At the age of only 12, he was employed at Warren's Blacking Factory at London's Hungerford Stairs, fixing labels to bottles of boot polish.

Completed in 1906, John Pierpont (JP) Morgan had the structure built to house his study and library right next to his brownstone residence. Stepping into the original structure, you're immediately transported to the Gilded Age: extravagant paintings line the ceilings of the entry rotunda, deep red wallpaper gives a solemn tone to his study, and wood bookcases display the impressive book collections.

There is no part of the metropolis which presents a more chequered aspect, both physical and moral, than Westminster. The most lordly streets are frequently but a mask for the squalid districts which lie behind them, whilst spots consecrated to the most hallowed of purposes are begirt by scenes of indescribably infamy and pollution; the blackest tide of moral turpitude that flows in the capital rolls its filthy wavelets up to the very walls of Westminster Abbey.