Lord George Gordon had beards and wore head coverings. He would often, in keeping with Jewish "chesed" (laws of mercy and charity), go into other parts of the prison to comfort prisoners by speaking with them and playing the violin. In keeping with "tzedaka" (charity) laws, he gave what little money he could to those in need. Charles Dickens, in his novel "Barnaby Rudge", which centres around the Gordon Riots, describes Gordon as a true "tzadik" (pious man) among the prisoners: On 28 January 1793, Lord George Gordon's sentence expired and he had to appear to give claim to his future good behaviour.
Letters of Charles Dickens burned those letters that had been sent to him in a mass bonfire in 1860, commenting, "Would to God that every letter I had ever written was on that pile". He burned more in 1869, the year before he died. As a result, hardly more than 250 letters to Dickens have survived to the present day. The reading public's first chance to study large numbers of Dickens letters came shortly after his death with the publication of "The Life of Charles Dickens" (1872–74) by his lifelong friend John Forster. Many of Dickens's letters to Forster were included, but they were