The Charles Dickens Letters Project
Period:
1836-1840
Theme(s):
family
To HENRY AUSTIN,1 [1840-1]
Envelope only.
Text from facsimile on eBay, July 2021.
Address: Henry Austin Esquire.
Date: Signature confirms 1840-1.
- 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 Stephenson 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 National Archives; text reproduced in Pilgrim Letters 9, pp. 569-70).