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
Dickens and Little Nell (Elwell) Dickens and Little Nell (Elwell) Dickens and Little Nell is a bronze sculpture by Francis Edwin Elwell that stands in Clark Park in the Spruce Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia. The sculpture depicts the 19th-century British author Charles Dickens and Nell Trent, a character from his 1840-41 novel "The Old Curiosity Shop". The grouping was one of the most celebrated American sculptural works of the late 19th century. It is one of just two known statues of Dickens, who said he wanted no such representations. The sculpture was commissioned in 1890 by "Washington Post" founder Stilson Hutchins, who wanted it placed