Charles Dickens Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash. The train's first seven carriages plunged off a cast iron bridge that was under repair. The only first-class carriage to remain on the track was the one in which Dickens was travelling. Before rescuers arrived, Dickens tended and comforted the wounded and the dying with a flask of brandy and a hat refreshed with water, and saved some lives. Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for "Our Mutual Friend", and he returned to his carriage to retrieve it. Dickens later used this experience as material for his short ghost story, "The
Dora Annie Dickens Dora Annie Dickens Dora Annie Dickens (16 August 1850 – 14 April 1851) was the infant daughter of English novelist Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine. She was the ninth of their ten children, and the youngest of their three daughters. Born at 1 Devonshire Terrace, Dora Dickens was named after the character Dora Spenlow, the child-bride of David Copperfield in Dickens's 1850 novel "David Copperfield". According to Dickens's oldest daughter Mary, on the day of Dora's unexpected death on 14 April 1851, her father had spent much of his time "playing with the children and carrying little Dora about