Item Info

Accession Number: 87-412
Physical Description: [1] page
Material: paper
Transcription:

 Thursday Twenty Fifth November 1869
My Dear Sir
         It appears to me that the non-payment of the teachers, in the case you so well set forth, is a point of vital weakness in the case. They have as good a right to be paid for their labour as the working man has to be paid for his; and they are not, in their degree, usually better paid than he is. I must say that if technical Education be of such importance to these recipients as they feel it to be, they are not truly independent (to my thinking) when they take it for nothing from men who can very indifferently afford to give it. And even if they were all men of fortune who could well afford it, the principle would be no less objectionable.
        For this reason I cannot call attention to the effort with unqualified praise.
                                                                 Faithfully Yours
                                                                   Charles Dickens
J.A. Langford Esquire LLD 

MssDate: Thursday Twenty Fifth November 1869
Media Type: Letters
Source: Rare Book Department
Notes:

Since there were no Government grants for technical education, teachers and others had been asked to give instruction free to members of the working class (Thomas F. Plowman, In the Days of Victoria, 1918, p. 315).  

Recipient: Langford, John Alfred, 1823-1903
Provenance: Hamilton, 12/1955, Matlack Fund.

Bibliography:

Volume 12, p. 444, The Letters of Charles Dickens, edited by Madeline House & Graham Storey; associate editors, W.J. Carlton…[et al.]

Country: Creation Place Note:No. 26, Wellington Street
Country:England
City/Town/Township:Strand, London. W.C.

Call Number: DL L263 1869-11-25
Creator Name: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 - Author