Charles Dickens Jr.

Charles Dickens Jr. was born at Furnival's Inn in Holborn, London, the first child of Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine Hogarth. He went to Eton College, and visited Leipzig in 1853 to study German. With ambitions to become a tea merchant, he visited China, Hong Kong and Japan in 1860. • Mary Angela (1862–1948) • Ethel Kate (1864–1936) • Charles Walter (1865–1923) • Sydney Margaret (1866–1955) • Dorothy Gertrude (1868–1923) • Beatrice (1869–1937) • Cecil Mary (1871–1952) • Evelyn Bessie (1873–1924) In 1866 he was appointed as the first Honorary Secretary of the Metropolitan Regatta. In 1868, after the failure of his printing business, and bankruptcy, he was hired by his father to work at All the Year Round and was appointed sub-editor the following year. At this time he also bought at auction Gads Hill Place, his father's Kent home, but he was forced to give it up in 1879. Charles Dickens Jr. died of heart disease, at his home in Fulham, London, on 20 July 1896, aged 59. He was buried at Old Mortlake Burial Ground on 23 July 1896. ==Legacy==

Dickens's estate was worth £17 5s. 3d at his death, After her death in 1909 yearly civil list pensions of £25 were granted to Mary Angela, Dorothy Gertrude, Cecil Mary and Evelyn Bessie after "consideration of their straitened circumstances". In 1910 their situation was so difficult that Ethel Dickens wrote to the Lord Chief Justice Richard Alverstone to seek assistance. In the letter, which was also published in The Daily Telegraph, she explained that her sisters were "barely making a living" as secretaries and babysitters and that her doctor told her to take six months' rest due to overwork. On 7 January 1912 a gala performance in which "leading actors and actresses" appeared as Dickens's characters at the London Coliseum raised £2500, while a separate appeal by The Daily Telegraph added an additional £3882. By the close of the fund in March 1912 it held £12,000, which was to provide £150 per year to each of the daughters. Author Lucinda Hawksley, a descendant of the elder Charles Dickens, has written that "the girls' begging letter" caused embarrassment for their uncle, London barrister Henry Fielding Dickens, Dickens's biographer Claire Tomalin said Charles Walter, only son of Dickens Jr., had been disowned by the family for marrying Ella Dare, a barmaid. Ethel died in 1936 of an overdose of phenobarbital at her flat in Chelsea, London. ==Bibliography==