The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To THOMAS BEGGS,1 20 OCTOBER 1849

Text from facsimile in Dominic Winter Auctions online catalogue, May 2024.

1 Devonshire Terrace
York Gate Regents Park
Twentieth October 1849.

Sir.

    I have been absent from London for more than three months,2 and during that time have had no parcels forwarded to me. It was only on my return home yesterday that I found your book and obliging note.

    I hasten to thank you for3 both. Some references to your enquiry into the interesting and sad subject of Juvenile Criminality4 have already attracted my attention. I shall read what you have sent to me without loss of time, and have no doubt I shall derive instruction from its perusal.

        Faithfully Yours

        CHARLES DICKENS

Thomas Beggs Esquire.

• 1. Thomas Beggs (1808-96), educationalist, temperance activist, and writer on juvenile delinquency. Secretary of the Complete Suffrage Association 1842, and of the Health of Towns Association 1848. Employed as an engineer and brass founder in London 1848-71.
• 2. CD was in Broadstairs and Bonchurch (Isle of Wight) from 8 July to 18 Oct.
• 3. “your” deleted after “for”.
• 4. An Inquiry into the Extent and Causes of Juvenile Depravity (London: Charles Gilpin, 1849). Beggs collected facts and figures concerning criminals, miners, factory workers, agricultural labourers, and prostitutes, as well as the more educated classes, in various parts of the country. He emphasises that alcoholism lay at the root of the problem: “The causes of juvenile immorality must be sought not only in the want of education, but in the drinking habits of the community. All reforms will be partial in their operation, unless this powerful element of evil is fully considered. Immensely important as education is, it can do little for children so long as the parents are slaves to the most selfish of all vices” (p. 13).