Charles Dickens was 12 years old when he was sent to work in a blacking factory. The experience began in 1824, during a crisis caused by his family’s financial troubles and his father’s imprisonment for debt.
Dickens worked at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse near Hungerford Stairs in London, pasting labels onto pots of boot blacking. He reportedly worked about ten hours a day and earned six shillings a week. The work was physically and emotionally humiliating for a boy who had previously received schooling.
His father, John Dickens, was confined in the Marshalsea debtors’ prison in February 1824. Charles lived separately and walked to the warehouse from lodgings in Camden Town. After his father’s release, Charles returned to school, but the episode left a lasting psychological mark.
Dickens kept this part of his childhood private for years. Its influence later appeared in David Copperfield and in his lifelong concern with poverty, child labour, debt, and social reform.