A private person who was kind and generous: Dorothy Dickens in Paddock Wood

Granddaughter of Charles Dickens

Few residents of the time knew that Dorothy Dickens, who is buried in St Andrews closed churchyard was a granddaughter of the great Charles Dickens.

The old St Andrews Church that Dorothy Dickens would have known and decorated with flowers. Destroyed by a bomb during WW2 ©

Dorothy Dickens Grave in St Andrews Closed Churchyard . Church Road Paddock Wood ©

It was only in recent years that this was confirmed for sure and a copy of her death certificate is now in the local archives.

Dorothy had experienced both the best and the worst of times. She was a caring and hard-working lady, who helped out at St Andrew’s Church in Paddock Wood and never gave much away about her family history.

Those who did get to know her may have learnt that she spent a lot of her life looking after and caring for children. During 1911 she was helping to run a children’s home in Broadstairs and came to Paddock Wood during the 1920s.

As very a small child Dorothy had visited the author at his Gad’s Hill Place home in Kent and was one of the eight children of his eldest son who was also named Charles.

In 1869 Dorothy was only 23 months old when her family attended what was to be Charles Dickens’s last Christmas. The picture of about the same time shows her in her little chair on the right (Bygone Kent, vol 40: no 1).

Dorothy Dickens as a child Acknowledgement BygoneKent ©

Charles Jr. took over the writer’s home after Dickens died in 1870 and lived there with his wife Elizabeth and their family for the next nine years. Tragically after that the family’s fortunes changed. Fame did not guarantee wealth in those days and members of the family fell on very hard times and finally had to beg for help from the state.

Charles had bought Gads Hill Place at auction for £8,600. Within 10 years he was forced to sell and in desperation moved into his offices in Wellington Street London. Elizabeth and the children were spread across the country staying with different relatives.

At one point the children joined a theatrical tour and Dorothy performed in ‘Cricket on the Hearth written by her grandfather and adapted for the stage by Albert Smith

Perhaps the family trauma was one of the reasons Dorothy was happy to live quietly. She remained for nearly 10 years at Broadstairs before spending her final years in Paddock Wood where she lived without fuss and clearly never letting the significance of her famous surname be widely known.

Dorothy became involved with St Andrew’s, helping visitors and decorating the church with flowers. She was a private person and was known locally as caring and generous with her time. Dorothy’s home was Acorn Villa a little house next to the restaurant of the same name, Acorn Restaurant, which is now (2022) the Simla Cuisine in Church Road. It was there that she died.

After her death it became known she was also part of a small team that helped blind soldiers cope with their loss of sight, teaching them to use special typewriters at the St Dunstan’s Institute in London. That great organisation, founded in 1915, is currently known as Blind Veterans UK and there is also a centre at Ovingdean Brighton which has been there since 1938.

One resident, Private James Rawlinson, of the 170th Battalion, Canadian Infantry, commented on his encounter with Dorothy
“I was diligently at work at my typewriter and, under the kindly instruction of Miss Dorothy Dickens, a granddaughter of the great novelist, I had soon acquired sufficient speed and accuracy to qualify for work.”

With acknowledgement to, and adapted from, Bygone Kent: Volume 40: no 1

Dickensian tale of poverty & charity in the authors family by Mike Gunnill.

Dorothy Dickens

Sir Frederick Morgan KCB Architect of D Day

Moatlands Paddock Wood