Read Oct 1, 2013
Juv Dickensian street-urchin story, based on an actual urchin.
Jim's
had a rough life - his father passed away so they're kicked out of
their country cottage home, his mother gets sick and can't work, so
they're kicked out of their tenement, and then his sisters get
essentially given away into domestic servitude to allow them warmth,
sleeping places, and food to eat. Jim and ma are on their own, but then
even ma dies, and Jim is left to the tender mercies of the workhouse.
After abuses and restrictions get too much, Jim runs
away to the streets, only to find that freedom isn't any better, and
might actually be worse. A stint selling cockles by the wharves is cut
short when he's kidnapped into service aboard ship, and then when he's
injured, he's back to the streets as a beggar.
Finally, desperation leads him to the Beggar School,
where the headmaster makes the despondent realization that there are
armies of little vagabonds, and begins the work of housing and feeding
them to keep them off the streets and rooftops.
Depressing, but realistic view of what life was (and is in many places still) like for the truly poor children of the world.
Pair
with Wolves of Willoughby Chase or the first book of the Mary Quinn
Mysteries, so you can really feel what they're escaping from.
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