The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To FRANCIS SMEDLEY,11 19 APRIL 1841

Text from facsimile in Swann Auction Galleries, April 2004.

Devonshire Terrace. / April The Nineteenth 1841.

My Dear Sir.

Unless you forbid me, I mean to call upon you next Monday between 12 and 1, and avail myself of your good offices2 in the matter of “the Boy Jones,”3 as the Sunday newspapers denominate him in very fat capitals. 

Francis Smedley Esquire

Faithfully Yours 

 CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Francis Smedley (1791-1858), High Bailiff of Westminster; father of Francis Edward Smedley, the novelist.
• 2. As a law officer, Smedley could gain CD admission to Tothill Fields Bridewell, to which CD had no access, though he was “free” of “most other jails” (To Smedley, 1 Apr 41; Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 246).
• 3. William Jones, known as “the Boy Jones”, a 17-year-old apothecary’s errandboy, serving a three months’ sentence in Tothill Fields after having been found in Buckingham Palace for the third time. He claimed, when arrested, that his only object in entering the Palace “was to hear the conversation of her Majesty and Prince Albert, in order to ‘write a book’” (Examiner, 21 Mar 41; Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 246): see further Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 246 & nn. CD saw him 26 Apr.