The year was 1913. It was winter, and near Belle Lake, in the woods that would become Piepenburg Park, 14 armed men, some of whom were charter members of Gopher
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From the pages of novels such as
Oliver Twist, Dickens savaged the injustices meted out to the impoverished – and at the top of his hit-list was the infamous New Poor Law
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“Please, Sir, I want some more.” Charles Dickens’ portrayal of Oliver Twist approaching the master and asking him, timorously, for a second helping of gruel is surely one of the most famous scenes in all of 19th-century literature.
When Dickens wrote these words in the 1830s, huge celebrity and vast fortune still lay in the future. Instead the author was thinking of the here and now – in particular, the plight of the most impoverished Britons. Dickens was determined to savage the terrible injustices he saw unfolding around him, and did that so effectively that he soon secured a reputation as a spokesman for the poor.