"Literary Links" - Dickens and Fagin

"Literary Links" is a series of posts celebrating Britain's wonderful links with great authors, dramatists and poets.

Charles Dickens

The current Southwark Bridge was opened in 1921 and replaced a Georgian bridge from 1819.  When Charles Dickens was still a boy he regularly crossed this first bridge on his way to visit his father in Marshalsea Prison – a debtor’s prison located half a mile south of this point.  Young Charles was put to work in a blacking factory near to where Charing Cross station is.  One day a work colleague started walking home with him.  Dickens recalled:

“I was too proud to let him know about the prison; and after making several efforts to get rid of him, to all of which Bob Fagin in his goodness was deaf, shook hands with him on the steps of a house near Southwark Bridge on the Surrey side, making believe that I lived there.  As a finishing piece of reality in case of his looking back, I knocked at the door, I recollect, and asked, when the woman opened it, if that was Mr Robert Fagin’s house.”

His colleague is forever immortalised as the lovable rogue of Fagin in Oliver Twist.

This is an excerpt from the tour London River Walks - South Bank which explores the southern bank of the River Thames.  The full tour is found on  www.obelisktours.co.uk