[Autograph letter signed.]. - Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870. (Broadstairs., 1843)
To Miss [Angela] Burdett Coutts. The first paragraph apologies for not having come to stay with her in Putney, then moves on to his matter:.
"On Thursday night, I went to the Ragged School; and an awful sight it is... The school is held in three most wretched rooms on the first floor of a rotten house: every plank, and timber, and brick, and lath, and piece of plaster in which, shakes as you walk. One room is devoted to the girls: two to the boys. The former are much the better-looking -- I cannot say better dressed, for there is no such thing as dress among the seventy pupils; certainly not the elements of a whole suit of clothes, among them all. I have very seldom seen, in all the strange and dreadful things I have seen in London and elsewhere anything so shocking as the dire neglect of soul and body exhibited in these children. And although I know; and am as sure as it is possible for one to be of anything which has not happened; that in the prodigious misery and ignorance of the swarming masses of mankind in England, the seeds of its certain ruin are sown, I never <see> saw that Truth so staring out in hopeless characters, as it does from the walls of this place. The children in the Jails are almost as common sights to me as my own; but these are worse, for they have not arrived there yet, but are as plainly and certainly travelling there, as they are to their Graves...".
Later red leather backed case stamped in gilt.
BIBDATA.LEVEL: Volume 3 -- Ready.
Keywords: Manuscripts; manuscripts (documents)