Berners Street a job as a result in 1827. One of the lodgers was a young lawyer called Edward Blackmore, who was impressed by the youngster and employed him as a solicitor’s clerk at Ellis & Blackmore in Grays Inn at the age of 15 (for more than twice the pay of the dreaded blacking factory job). It was in Berners Street that, as a boy, Dickens' saw a wandering woman, upon whom the character Miss Havisham from Great Expectations was clearly based. Dickens described her as "a conceited old creature, cold and formal in manner" who was "dressed entirely in white
Sondra Sherman begun to express a sense of human character and emotion. For example, the piece Miss Havisham uses Charles Dickens' archetypal character to explore the stereotype of the old maid and society's discomfort with nontraditional women. As Sherman describes, "Miss Havisham, a chagrined, wealthy old woman, was left standing at the alter. The interior of her magnificent house remains as it was decorated to celebrate her wedding day. An atmosphere of bitter disappointment prevails." Sherman has also worked at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,