The recent discovery that as a young man Charles Dickens lived only a few doors from a major London workhouse made headlines worldwide, and the campaign to save the workhouse from demolition caught the public imagination. Internationally, the media immediately grasped the idea that Oliver Twist's workhouse had been found, and made public the news that both the workhouse and Dickens's old home were still standing, near London's Telecom Tower. This book, by the historian who did the sleuthing behind these exciting new findings, presents the story for the first time, and shows that the two periods Dickens lived in that part of London - before and after his father's imprisonment in a debtors' prison - were profoundly important to his subsequent writing career.

The story of the recently discovered London workhouse that Charles Dickens lived almost next door to in the years before he wrote Oliver Twist - told by the historian who did the sleuthing behind these exciting new findings.

From a parish workhouse to the heart of the industrial revolution, from debtors' jail to Cambridge University and a prestigious London church, Robert Blincoe's political, personal and turbulent story illuminates the Dickensian age like never before. In 1792 as revolution, riot and sedition spread across Europe, Robert Blincoe was born in the calm of rural St Pancras parish. At four he was abandoned to a workhouse, never to see his family again. At seven, he was sent 200 miles north to work in one of the cotton mills of the dawning industrial age. He suffered years of unrelenting abuse, a life dictated by the inhuman rhythm of machines. Like Dickens' most famous character, Blincoe rebelled after years of servitude. He fought back against the mill owners, earning beatings but gaining self-respect. He joined the campaign to protect children, gave evidence to a Royal Commission into factory conditions and worked with extraordinary tenacity to keep his own children from the factories. His life was immortalised in one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, A Memoir of Robert Blincoe. Renowned popular historian John Waller tells the true story of a parish boy's progress with passion and in enthralling detail.

This text examines the history of the medical services provided by workhouses, both in Britain and its former colonies, during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The motivations behind Dickens' novels and the poverty-stricken world of 19th century London.