A Christmas Carol: Events in History at the Time the Story Takes Place

A CHRISTMAS CAROL'S ILLUSTRATTIONS Charles Dickens chose John Leech (1817-64) to illustrate A Christmas Carol. In doing so, he picked a man like himself: young and very talented. In 1841, Leech began an immensely successful career as a caricaturist for Punch magazine. Dickens requested four hand-colored plates (to be set off from the text) and four vignettes (in-text pictures) for A Christmas Carol. The scenes that Leech illustrated most likely were chosen by Dickens himself. The colored plates included "Mr. Fezziwig's Ball," "Marley's Ghost," "Scrooge's Third Visitor" (the Ghost of Christmas Present), and "The Last of the Spirits" The vignettes included "The Phantoms" (the spirits attempting but failing to allay suffering), "The End of the First Spirit" (Scrooge extinguishing the light of the Ghost of Christmas Past), "Ignorance and Want," and "The Christmas Bowl" (a reformed Scrooge sharing punch with Bob Cratchit). As Michael Patrick Hearn points out, Leech did not illustrate what almost every illustrator since has: Bob Cratchit with Tiny Tim on his shoulder (Hearn, p. 19).

by Charles Dickens

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Events in History at the Time the Story Takes Place

The "Hungry '40s.". A Christmas Carol occurs during the "Hungry Forties," a time of economic depression, high unemployment, failed crops, starvation, and disease. During the period from 1815 to 1842, the standard of living for the middle classes had improved dramatically and the rich had held their own, while the working classes saw their standard of living at best hold steady-perhaps decline. In 1842 public charities assisted 15 percent of the population, and private ones supported a great many more. According to Richard D. Altick, the first decade of Queen Victoria's reign (1837-47) was "the most harrowing and dangerous of the entire century" (Altick, p. 89). Despair and disenfranchisement (the working classes could not vote) fueled a growing radicalism called "chartism," its name derived from a "People's Charter" presented to Parliament. Chartism led to strikes and riots in 1839, 1842, and 1848, after which it weakened. On the whole, Dickens sympathized with the chartists, who advocated the following six points in their "People's Charter":

1. Annual meetings of Parliament

2. The right to vote for all men

3. Removal of property qualifications for men running for the House of Commons

4. Secret ballots

5. Equally divided electoral districts

6. Salaries for members of Parliament

An underlying social belief in unfettered market forces prevented the government from putting any brakes on them to ease the miseries of the poor. Utilitarianism, a complex philosophy emphasizing the good of society rather than the individual, promoted laissez-faire economics. Ebenezer Scrooge's comment that "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's" is in tune with this philosophy (Dickens, A Christmas Carol, p. 51). Compounding the ill effects of utilitarianism was a fear that the poor were reproducing too quickly. Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) had warned of the dangers of overpopulation in his Essay on the Principles of Population (1803). A Christmas Carol's Scrooge makes the Malthusian remark that if the poor would rather die than enter a state institution, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population" (A Christmas Carol, p. 51).

The New Poor Law. Paradoxically the laws that purported to help the poor increased their miseries. Dickens was a vigorous critic of the "New Poor Law," instituted in 1834, a law founded on utilitarian principles. His second novel, Oliver Twist (1837-39; also in Literature and Its Times), opens in a poorhouse, or "workhouse," and attacks the system that supports it. In A Christmas Carol, when a gentleman soliciting charity says to Ebenezer Scrooge, "Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts," Scrooge delivers his ironic reply for managing the poor: "Are there no prisons? … Are they [the workhouses] still in operation? … The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour then?" (A Christmas Carol, pp. 50-51). The Poor Law Amendment reorganized aid for the poor by providing support for the old and handicapped in their own homes, while requiring everyone else to enter a workhouse. The workhouse meant severe privation: jobs were monotonous, food scanty, and families divided. As Edgar Johnson comments on the new Poor Law, "In theory … [it] distinguished between the helpless and the man or woman who could work but wouldn't. In practice, however, it mingled the idler, tramp, drunkard, and prostitute in the same workhouse with the aged, ill, and infirm, and with the foundling children. The children suffered worst of all" (Johnson, p. 275).

Poor children: "ragged schools" and child labor. Dickens was keenly sensitive to the plight of poor children, and his awareness was heightened by two important events that preceded the writing of A Christmas Carol. In September 1843, Dickens visited a "ragged school," a charity school for the poorest children. While grateful that the school existed, Dickens was shocked by the "dire neglect of soul and body exhibited among these children," and convinced by the sight that "in the prodigious misery and ignorance of the swarming masses of mankind in England, the seeds of its certain ruin are sown" (Dickens in Johnson, p. 461).

That same year the Children's Employment Commission reported on the situation of children in manufacturing and the trades. Children worked in dangerous factories and cottage industries with few breaks for play, education, or even sleep. Earlier the Commission had reported that children as young as five worked up to 14 hours a day in the mines, with children from the workhouse receiving the worst jobs. Many Victorians were shocked. Dickens responded with fury, and described himself as "stricken down" (Dickens The Letters, Vol. 3, p. 459). He pledged to react with the force of a "sledge hammer" (Dickens The Letters, Vol. 3, p. 461). A Christmas Carol may be that hammer. In his story, Dickens depicts "Ignorance" and "Want" as two small and ragged children, hiding under the gown of Christmas Present. He also designates the crippled child, Tiny Tim, as an agent of redemption. Tiny Tim, who is, as his father states, "as good as gold," thaws Scrooge's icy heart, and draws the miser into a paternal relationship with the boy and his family (A Christmas Carol, p. 94).


Report on Child Labor, 1843

The Commission made the following comments on the state of laboring children. On the age of child workers: "That instances occur in which Children begin to work as early as three or four years of age; not infrequently at five, and between five and six; while, in general, regular employment commences between seven and eight; the great majority of the Children having begun to work before they are nine." On the hours of work: "in some few instances the regular hours of work do not exceed ten, exclusive of the time allowed for meals; sometimes they are eleven, but more commonly twelve; and in great numbers of instances the employment is continued for fifteen, sixteen, and even eighteen hours consecutively." On the injuriousness of the work: "from the early ages at which the great majority commence work, from their long hours of work, and from the insufficiency of their food and clothing, their 'bodily health' is seriously and generally injured; they are for the most part stunted in growth, their aspect being pale, delicate, and sickly, and they present altogether the appearance of a race which has suffered general physical deterioration."

(Second Report in Mitchell, pp. 43-44)