Page 13 - PBCJuly2012

Pickwick Bicycle Club Magazine. Volume 9 No.2 July 2012
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London Metropolitan Archives, has published a new series, spotlighting the
holdings of the LMA, Guildhall Library and Guildhall Art Gallery. An excerpt from
the new book, “London 1000”, is reproduced in part here.

First in the series is Charles Dickens where the City’s collections include numerous
traces of his career and who turns up in a range of archives highlighting aspects of his
intimate relationship with London. We reproduce the following with acknowledgments
to the LMA and to Senior Archivist Jeff Gerhardt.
“Dickens held several occupations before becoming a famous novelist. With the help of a distant
relative, he became a freelance court reporter, based at the ecclesiastical court known as Doctors’
Commons. In David Copperfield, Dickens describes life there as a "cosey, dosey, old-fashioned,
time-forgotten, sleepy-headed little family party." The court was also parodied in Sketches by
Boz, Nicholas Nickleby and Bleak House. The deposition shown here is an example of the kind
of document which Dickens spent his time writing up before escaping into a journalistic and literary
career.
Soon after his time as a court reporter, Dickens became a distinguished journalist for the
newspaper, The Morning Chronicle. His social circle broadened to include other journalists, such
as the eventual editor of The Evening Chronicle, George Hogarth. Dickens became close friends
of the Hogarth family and he eventually fell in love with George’s daughter Catherine. Charles
and ‘Kate’ were soon married, and the wedding took place at St. Luke’s, Chelsea, where it was
duly recorded in the parish register. They had ten children together before separating in 1858.