The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To HENRY AUSTIN1 [25 OCTOBER 1842]

Facsimile (envelope only) on International Autograph Auctions website, May 2016.

Date: PM 25 Oct 1842; "LISSON GROVE"2 stamped on front.

Address: Henry Austin Esquire | 87 Hatton Garden.

• 1. Henry Austin, (?1812-61) architect and civil engineer, active in sanitary reform. Married CD’s sister Letitia in 1837. Pupil of railway and civil engineer Robert Stephenson. While employed under him on the Blackwall Railway, Austin was "deeply impressed with the miserable conditions of the dwellings of the working class in the suburbs through which the railway was carried, and with the belief that many of the evils he saw could be remedied by sanitary knowledge and legislation based upon it" (Memorial presented to Lord Palmerston on his widow's behalf, 1862, signed by CD, Lord Shaftesbury, Edwin Chadwick et al: MS Public Record Office; text reproduced in Pilgrim Letters 9, pp. 569-70).
• 2. The office at which the letter was posted; near Regent's Park, and within walking distance of CD's home at 1 Devonshire Terrace.