“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Dickens was a great walker and he used to walk all over London seeing how people lived for himself. He wrote this passage to reflect the desperate situation that many people faced at the time, especially children. Remember that, in 1843 when the book was written, it was still considered to be good practice to lower children as young as three down chimneys to clean them. Beside the inevitable accidents which might maim or kill a child, many didn’t live long as they daily ingested dangerous amounts of carcinogens.

Nearly 180 years later, we might shake our heads and say how terrible conditions were for the poorer sections of Victorian society. Yet, it is my strong feeling that, in thinking this, we are as wrong as those smug Victorians who soothed their feeble consciences by saying that it was all ordained by God and nothing at all to do with them.

Dickens thought otherwise and he was horrified by reports of how poor working children were treated. He planned to write some crusading pamphlets but changed his mind when he had the idea for A Christmas Carol. The effect that this little book had on Victorian society cannot be overestimated. Poor children were no longer faceless and nameless, they were Tiny Tim.

But, as we look back, can we say that we are any better than those smug Victorians? In Dicken’s book two gentlemen go to Scrooge to ask for a donation as – ‘A few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.’