Retitled 'Titbull's Alms-Houses' in collected editions of the series.

Dickens clearly signals that a composite sketch of east London almshouses is intended in the present paper.

There were numerous such establishments, most of which have now disappeared (a Post Office map of 1860 shows at least five almshouses on or near the Mile End Road: the Vintners', Trinity, Bancroft's, Drapers' & Merchant Seamen's, and 'Maritime'). However, B. W. Matz argued in The Dickensian in 1905 that significant details of 'Titbull's Alms-Houses' 'appl[y] to the Vinters' Almshouses as they are today' ('Through Whitechapel with Dickens', Vol. 2 [1906], p. 238).

Dickens began work on the paper rather late, some time after the 7th of October, and the manuscript found its way into the hands of AYR compositor, Daniel F. Bastie, of the printer Charles Whiting & Co. Bastie saved the MS at the request of Samuel Clapp, who passed it on to his daughter (see MS Note below; report from the Dickens Fellowship Vancouver Branch in The Dickensian, Vol. 43 [1947], pp. 61-62).

MS. Robert H. Taylor Collection, Princeton University Library. The MS is unusual amongst the nine which survive of the 'Uncommercial Traveller' papers in its relative freedom from heavy correction. The cleanest of the twelve slips, the seventh, has only 36 words altered or inserted from a total of 418. Few changes seem to have occurred at proof stage. The suppression of the adjective 'benevolent' qualifying 'visitor' may point to a visit made by Dickens in company with Angela Burdett Coutts, in his capacity as her almoner; Dickens was always careful to avoid public references which might begin to identify her. MS 'My earliest journies have been among' altered to 'They refer back to journeys made among' in copytext.

Literary allusions:

• 'Jack's beanstalk': alludes to the traditional fairy story of Jack the Giant Killer;
• 'disparaged Titbull and all his works': 'renounce the devil and all his works', The Book of Common Prayer (1662), 'A Catechism';
• 'Titbull's was to Titbull's true': 'If England to itself do rest but true' Shakespeare, King John (printed 1623), Act V, Sc. 7.

Author: John Drew; © J. M. Dent/Orion Publishing Group, Dickens' Journalism Volume IV: 'The Uncommercial Traveller' and Other Papers, 1859-1870, 2000.

DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

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