In Stave One of A Christmas Carol (December 1843) charity collectors approach Scrooge:
“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”
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“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.
“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”
“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”
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“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge. [Stave 1: 50-51]
Later, the Spirit of Christmas Present mocks Scrooge’s former insensitivity by hurling his own words back at him as he regards the appalling children of humanity, Ignorance and Want:
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.
“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree; but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!”
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“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.
“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”
The bell struck twelve. [Stave 3: 108-109]
The timing of the scene, at the very conclusion of the Second Spirit’s magic lantern show, may well imply that time is running out for humanity to find a solution to these twin perils. At Christmas 1843 Dickens’s readers would have known full well to what dire social problems the writer was alluding, for the visages of Ignorance and Want were before them daily in England’s streets.
Compare this scene from Dickens to contemporary comments about the state of the destitute at Christmas in the December 1843 Illustrated London News.
Last Modified 21 July 2011
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