News that Rowan Atkinson has been forced to take time off from his role as Fagin in the production of Oliver, which is currently being staged at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, brings to mind our Charles Dickens London walks.
We have several different Dickens walks. There is one that goes around the Inns of Court and finishes at the Dickens House Museum on Doughty Street. We have another that follows a less obviously “Dickensian” route around Westminster and St James’s (both of which, incidentally, are also covered on our Royal London walk.)
We also have a Dickens in the City of London walk, which takes participants down under the Holborn Viaduct (built in 1869 to span the valley of the River Fleet and provide a direct route from the City of London to Holborn and the West End).
It was built as part of a scheme known as the “Holborn Valley Improvement,” which involved the demolition of some of London’s worst slums, or “rookeries” as they were known. One of these was a place known as Field Court, the site of which we cover on two of our Dickens in the City of London walks.
Field Court was where Fagin’s lair was located in Oliver Twist. But, as with so many of his characters, Dickens actually based his most enduring villain on a real 19th century criminal by the name of Isaac “Ikey” Solomon.
Ikey was Jewish and lived in the East End of London where he traded or “fenced” stolen goods. This underworld activity was very profitable for him and at the height of his career he was worth an estimated £30,000, which in today’s value would have been millions.
In April 1827 the forces of law and order caught up with him and he was arrested for theft and for receiving stolen goods. The wily Soloman somehow managed to fix it that the coachman who transported him from court to Newgate Prison was his own father-in-law.
The guards were somewhat surprised when the coach, instead of heading into the City of London, in fact went East. They were even more surprised when they were met by a group of Ikey’s criminal henchmen who quickly overpowered them and released Solomon.
Ikey left the country and headed for New York where he was beyond the reach of the authorities. Thwarted in their attempts to bring Solomon to justice the authorities opted instead to mete out retribution on Ikey’s wife and children who were transported to Tasmania.
Solomon, who was a devoted family man, followed them, was recognised and found himself back in England on trial at the Old Bailey. He was sentenced to transportation and duly sent back to Tasmania where he lived out the remainder of his days.
At around the time that Ikey Soloman was evading the law and then being tried, Charles Dickens had left school (he had been at the Wellington Academy on Hampstead Road) and had started work as legal Clerk. He had spent many of his teenage days walking all over the 19th century London.
Walks that took him in to some of the London’s most crime-ridden districts, which held a huge allure for the young man. His fascination with the criminal underclass of his day would help him create an abundance of colourful characters.
So when he took up his pen to begin work on Oliver Twist he thought back on the notorious East End fence Ikey Solomon, and transformed him into Fagin, the leader of a gang of City urchins who just had to pick a pocket or two.
