Justus D. Barnes Peggotty in "David Copperfield", the earliest known film adaption of the 1850 novel by Charles Dickens. He also played supporting roles in "Nicholas Nickleby" (1912), "Aurora Floyd" (1912), and "A Dog of Flanders" (1914). In 1917, he was released from the Thanhouser Company due to the company's financial issues. Barnes made his final onscreen appearance for the Edison Studio in "Cy Whittaker's Ward", in 1917. After retiring from acting, Barnes moved to Weedsport, New York where he worked as a milkman. He later owned a cigar store. Barnes died on February 6, 1946 in Weedsport at the age of 83.
Racism in the work of Charles Dickens of imperialism, had views on racial matters that were a good deal more complex than previous critics have suggested in her work "Dickens and Empire:" She suggests that overemphasising Dickens' racism obscures his continued commitment to the abolition of slavery. Laurence Mazzeno has characterised Moore's approach as depicting Dickens' attitude to race as highly complex, "struggling to differentiate between ideas of race and class in his fiction...sometimes in step with his age, sometimes its fiercest critic." Others have observed that Dickens also denied suffrage to blacks, writing in a letter "Free of course he must be; but the stupendous absurdity