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In this article, as in 'Gone to the Dogs' [HW, Vol. XI, 10 March 1855] (article 36 [in the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism Vol. 3, pp. 283–91]), Dickens uses a device that enables him to string together a number of disparate satirical points he wishes to make. The contrast between the money spent in honouring Nelson and that spent in honouring Wellington connects with his earlier condemnation of the costly and ostentatious State Funeral given to the latter [see 'Trading in Death', HW, Vol. VI. 27 November 1852]. The allusion to a 'pauper provision' for Nelson's daughter concerns Horatia, his daughter by Lady Hamilton, officially known as his 'adopted' daughter until his paternity became public knowledge in 1849. In his will Nelson famously left Lady Hamilton as 'a legacy to my King and Country'; also Horatia, to 'the beneficence of my country'. But the death of Pitt meant that no public provision was arranged for the women.

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Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

Dickens probably wrote the following portions of 'Received, a Blank Child': from 'Proceeding to visit' (p. 51) to 'sensation at all' (p. 52); from 'But, as we were leaving' (p. 52) to 'Joe ... £500' (p. 53).
Dickens may also have written or added substantially to the following passages: from the beginning to 'at this day' (p. 49); from 'Such is the home' (p. 53) to the conclusion.
In addition, Dickens seems to have gone over and emended the following section: from 'One end' to 'with the hospital' (p. 52).
Finally, Dickens seems to have added touches to passages primarily by Wills - for example, he may have added the sentence beginning, 'But, though shipwrecked' (p. 50). For a discussion of the Dickens-Wills attributions, see note to 'Valentine's Day at the Post-Office'.
'Received, a Blank Child' gives an account of the history and methods of the famous London Foundling Hospital. Dickens had long been interested in 'the Foundling.' He mentioned 'the Foundling' in such early works as 'The Boarding-House' (Sketches by Boz, 1836) and Barnaby Rudge (1841), and he made the Hospital figure significantly in such later works as Little Dorrit (1855-1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867).

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

Dickens probably wrote the following portions of 'H. W.': from the beginning to 'undergone or seen' (p. 146); from 'The copies' (p. 149) to the conclusion.
Dickens seems also to have added touches to passages primarily by Morley. For example, Dickens probably interpolated such sentences as the following: the sentence beginning 'H. W. is in this form' (p. 147); the sentence beginning 'In other respects' (p. 147).
The latter sentence is built up of imagery from the melodrama The Miller and His Men (1813) by Isaac Pocock (1782-1835). The Miller and His Men captured Dickens' imagination in his boyhood and early teens when he helped stage the play in elaborate toy-theatre productions. The play is the source of scores of allusions in Dickens' writings.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

Excerpts from the New York Spiritual Telegraph.

Dickens probably wrote the following portion of 'In and Out of Jail': from 'I go further still' (p. 244) to the conclusion.
Dickens may also have written or added to the following passage: from 'Thus far' to 'Mr. Hill proposes' (p. 244).
In addition, Dickens seems to have added touches to the following passage: from the beginning to ''without mercy'' (p. 242).
Finally, Dickens seems to have interpolated brief comments elsewhere in the essay.
This article, a review of Frederic Hill's Crime: Its Amount, Causes, and Remedies (1853), was originally written by Morley under the title of 'A Doctor of Morals.' Dickens was dissatisfied and instructed Wills to make changes (see letter of 10 March 1853 below), but apparently was still dissatisfied when he saw Wills' revision, and finally reworked the piece himself, editing it and adding the passages listed above.
Dickens' letter to Wills gives some indication of how strictly he controlled the editorial policies of Household Words, how closely those policies followed his own ideas, and how pervasively he colored articles not his own, by his known predilections and editorial assignments, as well as by interpolating phrases, comments, and sometimes long passages. In this instance, portions of Morley's piece ran counter to Dickens' published views. Dickens writes:

A Doctor of Morals, impossible of insertion as it stands. A mere puff for Hill, with all the difficult parts of the question blinked, and many statements utterly at variance with what I am known to have written. It is exactly because the great bulk of offences in a great number of places are committed by professed thieves, that it will not do to have Pet Prisoning advocated, without grave remonstrance and great care [see 'Pet Prisoners' by Dickens, Household Words, 27 April 1850; see also 'Cain in the Fields', Household Words, 10 May 1851]. That class of prisoner is not to be reformed. We must begin at the beginning and prevent by stringent education and supervision of wicked parents, that class of prisoner from being regularly supplied as if he were a human necessity.
Do they teach trades in workhouses, and try to fit their people (the worst part of them) for Society? Come with me to Tothill Fields Bridewell, or to Shepherd's Bush [the former was a prison for petty offenders, the latter a home for "fallen women" founded by Angela Burdett-Coutts with Dickens' very active participation], and I will show you what a workhouse girl is. Or look to my Walk in a Workhouse (in H. W . [25 May 1850]) and to the glance at the youths I saw in one place, positively kept like wolves.
Mr. Hill thinks prisons could be made nearly self-supporting. Have you any idea of the difficulty that is found in disposing of Prison-Work? Or does he know that the Treadmills didn't grind the air because the State or the Magistracy objected to the competition of prison labour with free labour, but because the work could not be got?
I never can have any kind of prison discipline disquisition in H. W. that does not start with the first great principle I have laid down, and that does not protest against prisons being considered per se. Whatever chance is given to a man in a prison, must be given to a man in a refuge for distress.
The article in itself is very good, but it must have these points in it; otherwise I am not only compromising opinions I am known to hold, but the journal itself is blowing hot and cold and playing fast and loose, in a ridiculous way ...
Let me see a revise when you have got it together ...

Dickens saw the 'revise' and then reworked the article himself.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

Based largely on Frederic Hill, Crime: Its Amount, Causes, and Remedies (1853).

Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

Dickens probably wrote the following portions of 'Idiots': the opening paragraph; from 'To this establishment' (p. 316) to the conclusion.
In addition, Dickens seems to have added touches elsewhere - for example, the interjection beginning '- whose name has a peculiar attraction' (p. 314). For a discussion of the Dickens-Wills attributions, see note to 'Valentine's Day at the Post-Office'.
'Idiots' grew out of a visit to Park House Asylum, Highgate. Park House and its sister institution, Essex Hall Asylum, near Colchester, were closely associated with Dickens' friend, Dr. John Conolly (1794-1866), a pioneer in the humane treatment of the insane. Dickens and Wills planned the visit and the article with a view to helping these new institutions. In an unpublished letter to Wills (14 April 1853), now in the Huntington Library, Dickens discussed with Wills the arrangements then being concluded with Conolly for visits to Highgate and Colchester. The plan was to tour Highgate (probably on 21 April) and to decide on the basis of that visit whether it would be advisable to tour Colchester as well. Apparently the latter visit was not deemed necessary.
The treatment of the insane, like the treatment of the blind, the deaf, the poor, the sick, and the criminal, always interested Dickens. He often visited insane asylums, and his writings - from Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839) to Little Dorrit (1855-1857), and from American Notes (1842) to All the Year Round (1859-1870) - attest to his lifelong interest in the nature and treatment of insanity. For another article by Dickens and Wills on an institution for the mentally ill, see 'A Curious Dance Round a Curious Tree'.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

Dickens was provoked into writing this article by the renewed public enthusiasm for the eighteenth-century concept of 'the noble savage', of a 'purer' moral nature to be found in dark-skinned races who had not been 'corrupted' by civilisation. This enthusiasm was given a focus by the latest show presenting native Africans to be staged in London, a party of 'Zulu Kaffirs' brought over by A. T. Caldecott, a merchant from Natal, which had been annexed to Cape Colony by the British in 1843. The troupe consisting of eleven men, one woman and a child, appeared at the fashionable St George's Gallery, Hyde Park Corner, and performed scenes illustrative of daily life in their native environment enlivened with 'characteristic dances'. The Times announced the event (18 May 1853) as 'a novel and most interesting exhibition with appropriate scenery and moving panorama painted expressly by Mr Charles Marshall'. 

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Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

Dickens begins this exercise in satirical allegory by alluding to the slow progress and ever-rising expense of the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament after their destruction by fire in 1834, two years after the Reform Bill had increased the number of MPs. There was much public debate in the autumn of 1845, as to whether a statue of Cromwell should be included in a series of statues of the kings and queens of England (see, for example, The Times leader of 16 September 1845). The 'Cartoons' were designs for frescoes illustrative of the nation's history submitted by artists competing for the commission to decorate the walls of the new building. They were shown in a series of public exhibitions in Westminster Hall (see ['The Spirit of Chivalry: in Westminster Hall', Douglas Jerrold's Shilling Magazine (August 1845),] Vol. 2 of [the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism], p. 74) – Dickens had already mocked British artists' enthusiasm for 'the German taste' with their fondness for beards in 'The Ghost of Art' (HW, [Vol. I,] 20 July 1850; see Vol. 2 of [the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism], pp. 257–64). His description of MPs' rowdiness and verbosity echoes much similar satire in his writings, most notably in David Copperfield, Chap. 34.

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