The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To F. O. WARD,1 19 JANUARY 1852

MS Phillip Pirages.

Tavistock House

Monday Nineteenth January | 1852.

My Dear Ward. I seem to be under a kind of spell when you propose anything. I am engaged on Wednesday—with my new book2 in the day, and to dine at Bayswater with Egg the Painter,3 in the evening. But I will get my Sub Editor Mr. Wills to see the invention4 with a view to some account of it in Household Words,5 and (as he knows Chadwick)6 will propose to him to be at the Board of Health7 at the hour you appoint. 

F. O. Ward Esquire.

Faithfully Yours

 CD.

• 1. Frederick Oldfield Ward (?1815-77), writer on sanitary subjects: see Pilgrim Letters 4, p. 86n.
• 2. Bleak House (No. I published 28 Feb).
• 3. Augustus Leopold Egg (1816-63; Dictionary of National Biography), artist: see Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 113n.
• 4. Not identified. Ward was particularly concerned with drainage for London and supported Sir Joseph Bazalgette: see Stephen Halliday, The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis, Stroud, Glos, 1999.
• 5. No account of Ward or his invention appears in Household Words during the next year, though articles by Henry Morley (“A Foe under Foot”, Household Words, 11 Dec 52, VI, 289-92) and by Wills (“Clear Water and Dirty Water”, Household Words, 5 Feb 53, VI, 496-7) both concern sanitation.
• 6. Edwin Chadwick (1800-90; Dictionary of National Biography), social reformer. CD supported his efforts for sanitary reform.
• 7. The General Board of Health, established 1848, with Chadwick as Chairman; its statutory life ended, July 54. The new Board, established Aug 54, was chaired by Benjamin Hall (Pilgrim Letters 7, pp. 384nn, 400nn).