The setting of London is one of the few specific details revealed in the tale. By 1840, London was the largest city in the world with a population of 750,000. Poe would have known London from the time he spent there as a boy with his foster family, the Allans, although he may have relied on the writings of Charles Dickens for details of London's streets. In this story and others, Poe associates modern cities with the growth of impersonal crime.