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
Letters of Charles Dickens in private hands, most are now in libraries and public institutions. The largest collection is held by the Charles Dickens Museum in London, the second largest by the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the third largest by the Morgan Library & Museum in New York; other extensive collections are held by the British Library, the New York Public Library, the Huntington Library, and the Free Library of Philadelphia. In contrast, few letters to Dickens are known. Dickens often expressed his opposition to the publication of private letters, and was determined to suffer from it himself as little as possible. He