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
Catherine Dickens death is fictionalised as the death of Little Nell. Catherine's younger sister, Georgina Hogarth, joined the Dickens fam household in 1842 when Dickens and Catherine sailed to America, caring for the young family they had left behind. In 1845 Charles Dickens produced the amateur theatrical "Every Man in his Humour" for the benefit of Leigh Hunt. In a subsequent performance, Catherine Dickens, who had a minor role, fell through a trap door injuring her ankle. In 1851, as 'Lady Maria Clutterbuck', Catherine Dickens published a cookery book, "What Shall we Have for Dinner? Satisfactorily Answered by Numerous Bills of Fare