The Ghosts of Christmas Past

by Andy Conway

  It has been my invariable practice to attend to the morals of the people in our employ, discountenancing vice by every means in my power. This is a direct quote from the Disposition of John Turner, sworn to before Leonard Horner and John Spencer, Esquires, 1st May 1833 in the matter of Hammond, Turner & Sons, button manufactory. John Turner was answering the question: What is your impression of the moral character of the children, male and female, in your employ?

  Countess of Huntingdon Connexion chapel. Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, who died in 1791, was an English religious leader who left an affiliated group of churches (Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion) in England and in Sierra Leone in Africa. She financed the building of 64 chapels in England and Wales. The Connexion chapel in Birmingham was demolished to make way for New Street Station in 1846, four years after the events of this story. From the description of its location on William Dargue’s website, I have worked out that it faced the Dungeon.

  New Street Station. William Dargue writes in his blog: ‘The London and North Western Railway obtained an Act of Parliament in 1846, to extend their line into the centre of Birmingham, which involved the acquisition of some 1.2 hectares (3 acres) of land, and the demolition of 70 or so houses in Peck Lane, The Froggery, Queen Street, and Colmore Street. The Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion chapel (Methodist), on the corner of Peck Lane and Dudley Street, which had only been built six years before, was also demolished.’

  Dense cloud of smoke that hung over the town. James Drake in 1839 wrote of Birmingham’s ‘dense cloud of smoke issuing from its confused mass of buildings, and brooding over it in sullen gloom.’ (James Drake, 1839 Road Book of the London & Birmingham and Grand Junction Railways.)

  Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond by William Makepeace Thackeray, Dickens’ biggest rival as a novelist, was published in Fraser’s Magazine in instalments from September to December 1841, but was not reprinted in book form until January 1849, after the publication of Vanity Fair.

  Forster’s broken engagement. John Forster was engaged to Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L. She broke off the engagement when Forster launched an investigation, at her behest, into rumours of her having affairs and secretly bearing children. To save him from scandal, she let him go, but privately expressed that it was his lack of trust: ‘If his future protection is to harass and humiliate me as much as his present — God keep me from it.’

  His heart grew dark. An ironic quote from L.E.L.’s Last Question, a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, written on L.E.L.’s death in 1844.

  Warren’s Blacking Warehouse. When Dickens’ father, John Dickens, was declared bankrupt and forced into Marshalsea debtors’ prison, the 12-year-old Charles was forced to leave school and work ten-hour days at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station, where he earned six shillings a week pasting labels on pots of boot blacking. The experience is often cited as the foundation of his interest in the reform of socio-economic and labour conditions.

  Master Green. Paul Green, along with Fred Fagin was one of the boys at Warren’s Blacking Factory where the young Charles Dickens was condemned to work for a short time. While some biographical depictions of Dickens portray these lads as mean-spirited bullies who delighted in dragging a toff down into the dirt with them, they were, by his own account, very kind and supportive. Dickens’ guilt over escaping their fate haunted him for the rest of his days.

  Cornish’s Cheap Book Establishment was on New Street for a good many years and features in several Touchstone books, most notably The Sins of the Fathers. At this time it was at 37 New Street, but occupied various other numbers along that same corner. It can be seen in the famous photograph of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show promenading down New Street, which was the inspiration for the Touchstone short story, Buffalo Bill and the Peaky Blinders.

  J.W. Showell, Printer and Stationer, 45 and 46 New Street is listed as one of several businesses, along with Cornish’s, that occupied New Street in an engraving from 1860.

  Dickens’ anti-Tory feeling. Dickens was a staunch supporter of the Whig party and thus vehemently anti-Tory. He went so far as to put his feeling in verse in the pseudonymously published poem, The Fine Old English Gentleman, published in the liberal journal The Examiner in 1841, only two years before the events of this book, in which he rails against ‘the fine old English Tory times’ with savage satire.

  Robert Peel government. Dickens reacted angrily to the election of Sir Robert Peel as British prime minister in 1841, replacing Lord Melbourne and his Whig ministry. The power shift was a serious threat to the liberal cause and its reforms, personified by Dickens as ‘strong-wing’d’ Tolerance, who triumphs briefly over ‘the pure old spirit’ of Tory repression in verse seven of The Fine Old English Gentleman.

  Gammon. While this pejorative term for dreadful old reactionary men is thought to be a recently-coined slang term, it in fact has great historical pedigree. Dickens uses it in Nicholas Nickleby, published in 1838. The time had been, when this burst of enthusiasm would have been cheered to the very echo; but now, the deputation received it with chilling coldness. The general impression seemed to be, that as an explanation of Mr. Gregsbury’s political conduct, it did not enter quite enough into detail; and one gentleman in the rear did not scruple to remark aloud, that, for his purpose, it savoured rather too much of a ‘gammon’ tendency.

  You know nothing of my life. John Forster, of course, became Dickens’ biographer, and it wasn’t until much later in life that Dickens revealed the trauma of his time at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse. Apart from his parents and siblings, who never spoke of it again, it is likely that no one knew of it, not even Dickens’ wife and children, until Forster’s biography was published in 1872, two years after Dickens’ death.

  Time’s Laughingstocks is the title Thomas Hardy’s collection of poems published in 1909.

  Ira Aldridge was an African-American actor and something of a star in Victorian England, marketed as the ‘African Roscius — a Most Extraordinary Novelty, a Man of Colour’. Birmingham’s love affair with Aldridge began in January 1828, when theatres were usually closed following Christmas.. He starred in the musical melodrama The Slave, followed by Othello, and the Birmingham Gazette said, ‘We were greatly astonished... (and) totally unprepared to meet with a performer’ who could challenge criticism at the highest level — who ‘possesses a voice... as fine, flexible and manly, as any on the London stage.’

  Margaret Gill, born in Yorkshire, England, was the first wife of Ira Aldridge. They married in 1825. Their inter-racial marriage caused great anger from the pro-slavery lobby. She died in 1864.

  Harlequinade. It was traditional for children to visit the theatre at Christmas to see the Harlequinade. This proto-pantomime developed out of the Commedia dell’Arte. The plot was always the same and involved. a pair of star-crossed lovers (Columbine and Harlequin), a belligerent old father (Pantaloon) trying to marry his daughter off to a rich fool, though she is in love with a good-hearted man of lower stock. He is slowed down by his bumbling servant, Clown, and a slow-witted policeman. The Harlequinade always climaxed with a magical scene of transformation presided over by a fairy godmother. Harlequin was a figure of chaos, pricking pomposity and revelling in disruption to the established order.

  Gabriel Grub. Seven years before A Christmas Carol, Dickens published a short story as Chapter 29 of The Pickwick Papers. ‘The Story of the Goblins who stole a Sexton’ is very much a prototype of the Scrooge story, in which an ‘ill-conditioned, cross-grained, surly fellow — a morose and lonely man, who consorted with nobody but himself’ is abducted by goblins who show him scenes from his past, present and future in order to transform him into a better man. The action takes place on Christmas Eve.

  Mr Allin’s curiosity shop was formerly the castellated building at the end of Ann Street, right next to the Town Hall and something of a landmark for many years. M
apping Birmingham says that Allin moved the shop to High Street at the time of this book, but the Kelly’s Directory for 1839 does not show any Allin-owned shop on High Street.

  What a flare that was! Dickens reportedly used this peculiar phrase for a variety of meanings: for publishing, a party, an argument and for a fight.

  The blood came rushing back to his cheeks, so violently he moaned in pain and clutched his heart. Dickens writes this in Chuzzlewit at about this time so I have here suggested this might be the inspiration for the line.

  A sledge-hammer blow. Ackroyd notes that this was a common phrase in Dickens’ writing at this time, and yet it is not to be found in either A Christmas Carol nor Martin Chuzzlewit. (Ackroyd, page 447).

  A rusty old chariot with post-horses. This mode of travel is precisely that mentioned in chapter three of Martin Chuzzlewit, which Dickens had already submitted for publication by this day.

  The London and Birmingham Railway. The first train back to London was at 7am and arrived in London at 12.45. The cost for an ‘A’ standard ticket was 32 shillings and sixpence.

  Dickens’ children. Dickens had ten children in all, but at the time of this story, he had fathered only the first four: Charley, Mary, Kate and Walter.

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  About the Author

  Andy Conway is the novelist, screenwriter and time traveller behind the bestselling Touchstone series. He wrote the feature films Arjun & Alison, An American Exorcism and The Courier and runs a publishing empire from a loft in Birmingham. Read more at andyconway.net

  Photography: Ian Davies iandaviesphoto.com

  Copyright Notice

  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This Kindle edition 2019

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  First published in Great Britain by

  Wallbank Books 2019

  Copyright © Andy Conway 2019

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