The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To ROBERT BAKER,1 6 JUNE 1851

Replaces mention in Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 408.

Text from facsimile from unknown source.

On mourning paper.2

Broadstairs, Kent.3

Sixth June 1851.

Sir,

            Allow me to return to return to you my thanks for the little book4 you have so obligingly sent me, and to assure you that I have read it with much interest and think it calculated to do a great deal of good.

                                                                        Faithfully Yours

                                                                        CHARLES DICKENS

Robert Baker Esquire

• 1. Robert Baker (1803-80), surgeon, factory inspector and social reformer. Trained at Guy’s Hospital, London (MRCS 1828). Following the Factory Act of 1833, became Superintendent of Factories in 1834 in Yorkshire, and Inspector of Factories (covering half of the UK) in 1858. Contributed "Words for the Working Classes" to Meliora; or, Better Times to Come, Being the Contributions of Many Men Touching the Present State and Prospects of Society, ed. Viscount Ingestre (1st series, 1852). See W.R. Lee, "The First Doctor in the Factory Department", British Journal of Industrial Medicine 21.2 (1964): 85-93.
• 2. CD's daughter Dora had died suddenly on 14 Apr 1851.
• 3. CD stayed at Broadstairs from 28 May to 20 Oct 1851.
• 4. The Present Condition of the Working Classes, Generally Considered: in Two Lectures, delivered before the members of the Bradford Church Institute (London: Longman & Co., 1851). This pamphlet emphasised the need for better housing and education: two topics which would have particularly appealed to CD.