Locating Tom-All-Alone's (2012)

Those with an interest in Dickensian topography have puzzled, over the decades, about the location of Tom-all-alone's in Bleak House. As JL early as 1880 Robert Langton pointed out that the name was lifted from a place in Chatham, well-known to Dickens as a child (59-60). But it was the name only that was drawn on, the Chatham location bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the London slum to which Dickens attached the same name in 1853. From Robert All but in 1899 (4-5) to Andrew Sanders in 2010 (129-30) various courts and alleyways in London have been suggested for the real sites of their fictional counterpart. The area of Drury Lane was a popular suggestion; so too were the rookeries of St. Giles and Field Lane, all areas, during Dickens's lifetime, of slum dwellings and great poverty. But nowhere seemed to quite fit the illustration supplied by Hablot K. Browne; and for that reason some observers have suggested the illustration was an imaginative vision, not a real place at all. Dickens, though, rarely allowed his illustrators that freedom of choice, that looseness of approach; nor did he in this case, I suggest. Two years ago I discovered in The National Archives at Kew in London documents arising from cases brought in the Court of Chancery relating to Warren's Blacking. They are dated 1826 to 1827 and demonstrate, unequivocally, that the person who employed Charles Dickens in his blacking warehouse was William Edward Woodd. It is also equally clear there was nobody involved in this business by the name of James Lamert. However, Woodd did employ his brother-in-law George Lamerte, initially as a clerk, though Woodd increasingly came to rely on him to manage the whole set up. My first findings were presented in an article published in the Dickensian in June 2010 and unravelled some of the confusion written in Forster's Life of Dickens. (1) Further searching uncovered more documents at The National Archives and elsewhere which greatly expand our knowledge of the people involved in the production of Warren's Blacking, and of the Lamerte family. One of the outcomes of this further research is identification of the location of Tom-all-alone's. It was George Lamerte's father, Matthew, who married Dickens's Aunt Mary at Chatham in 1821, immediately taking her off to live in Ireland, where she died giving birth to twins just nine months later. Though his father moved away George remained behind at Chatham, staying with the Dickens family, and moved with them when John Dickens was soon after transferred to London, living with them at Bayham Street. George Lamerte, though, already had his own extended family in London. His mother and father were probably cousins, sharing the name Lamert, on his father's side sometimes spelt with an extra e on the end but on his mother's side always spelt without the e. Both sides of the family derived from German-Jewish backgrounds. George Lamerte's maternal grandfather, Isaac, was a quack doctor, still alive in 1822 and residing at Church Row, Spitalfields. Isaac had one son, Abraham, and four daughters, George Lamerte's mother, Sarah, and her three sisters, Esther, Catherine and Rachel, George's aunts and uncle. One of these aunts, Rachel, married Aaron Worms and together they ran a shop in London's East End at 107 Whitechapel Road. George's Uncle Aaron brought with him a further extension to the family, seven children of his own, and a brother, Henry Worms, with eight more children. There is cast-iron proof, described in the evidence given to the Court of Chancery, that George Lamerte was on good terms with his Worms cousins: in October 1824, at about the same time Dickens left Warren's Blacking, George Lamerte and William Edward Woodd parted company and three months later Lamerte set up in the business of manufacturing blacking with his cousin Lewis Worms, eldest son of his Aunt Rachel and Uncle Aaron, operating from the premises in Whitechapel. Their partnership lasted about 20 months and in August 1827, when George Lamerte was sufficiently on his feet to go it alone, he moved to nearby premises at 56 Mansell Street, Goodman's Fields, also in Whitechapel. …