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Charles Dickens

Madeline House and Graham Storey (eds), The British Academy/The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. 2: 1840–1841

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To JOHN FORSTER, [LATE MAY 1840]

Extract in F, ii viii, 158. Date: May 40 according to Forster; during the week before CD and family left for Broadstairs.

I don't know of a word of news in all London,5 but there will be plenty next week, for I am going away, and I hope you'll send me an account of it. I am doubtful whether it will be a murder, a fire, a vast robbery, or the escape of Gould,6 but it will be something remarkable no doubt.7

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Editor’s Note
5 Forster was himself away from London at the time (F, ii viii, 158).
Editor’s Note
6 Richard Gould, alias Arthur Nicholson, had been tried at the Central Criminal Court, 14 Apr 40, for the murder of John Templeman on 17 Mar at Islington—and acquitted. Recommitted on 13 May, on a charge of burglary at Templeman's house, he was found guilty and sentenced. He was transported 22 June 40.
Editor’s Note
7 Forster tacks on here, as if part of the same letter, CD's "almost" blaming himself for the "poor girl who leaped off the Monument", and the finding of the skeleton in a London sewer, while he was at Broadstairs 1839—part of To Forster, 18 Sep 39 (Vol. i, p. 582).
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