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Charles Dickens; Reforming From Experience Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812. Dickens was born at the height of the Industrial Revolution, a time which
to debtor's prison. Although Dickens escaped the same fate as his family, he was forced to support himself by working in a shoe-polish factory. The horrific conditions
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Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812. Dickens was born at the height of the Industrial Revolution, a time which brought great change to Victorian society. Population in urban areas (London's, in particular) soared. The overpopulation led to a lack of employment; soon poverty and crime increased. In response, the Poor Laws were put into effect. The Poor Laws established baby farms and workhouses to provide aid for those in poverty, and those who could not find work. Rather than provide money or pay in a form of welfare, they provided food and housing. As a child, Dickens experienced the hardships of poverty and neglect of aid that he would write about in his works later in his life. Charles Dickens strongly disagreed with the Poor Laws, and expressed negative imagery of its institutions and those who ran them. Charles Dickens's personal experiences with the underprivileged and government neglect of these people in English society led to his book Oliver Twist. This book became an invitation for British society to take action and aid the poor and working classes with methods other than workhouses.
Charles Dickens's experiences with poverty as a child, and his first-hand accounts of workhouses and other effects of the Poor Law Amendment Act he witnessed later in his travels as a journalist, shape events, characters, and settings in Oliver Twist. When Charles Dickens was twelve, in 1824, his father was imprisoned in a debtor's prison. Charles was the only member of this family allowed to leave; outside the prison walls, Dickens was working at a blacking factory. His experiences in and out of the debtor's prison and blacking factory greatly influenced Oliver Twist. Dickens's father was put into a debtor's prison, Marshalsea, and his family came with him, in 1824, only three years after his role as a naval office clerk was phased out. Dickens was the only one let out, so that he could work in a blacking factory. It was here that he met...
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