Letter to Charles Dickens

Letter

21 February 1809

Charles Dickens

48 Doughty St, London

Dear Mr Dickens,

Mr Dickens I need your help, could you please use your fame and your writing to help me and others like me. We need better living and working conditions, we need rights and I have a feeling you can help us you're a skilled writer and everyone knows you, so I appease you to help us. You may not understand my case as you are living in luxury with your own house and a steady pleasant job and everything but I'll try my hardest to explain sir.

Our homes are damp and freezing cold in winter, and they are dark with poor ventilation we even had to sell our windows for food and I know the families next door had to burn their door to keep warm. There is running sewage in our homes attracting fleas and rats and giving us diseases, my family even suspects I may have cholera, to make matters worse the diseases are spread even faster as we share beds with three or more other sick children. We have barely any food and we certainly don't have clean water to drink I'm lucky if I get 3 meals a week.

Now this might seem absurd to you but I'm only 9 I've been working in the mines since I was 5 spending all day opening and shutting the mine doors, when I was 7 I moved to a factory most kids are doing the same thing hoping the factories will be better. They aren't. The air is polluted and it is hot, I work 16 hours a day with no break along with many others my age, the work is hard and tiring and some of us get exhausted and get injured because there are no safety rules in fact my best friend Timmy lost his arm in one of the machines yesterday and was fired he can't get another job because he's useless now, even those of us who don't get injured will never be the same my mother says my back has been damaged from all the heavy machinery and tools, well she said that she died last week of typhus during breakfast.

You can see why I need your help sir and I hope you'll consider my letter, either way thankyou for reading it, I know I can count on you Mr Dickens.

Sincerely yours,

Joseph