"File:Water Engine, Cold-Bath Field's Prison (Microcosm of London, plate 19) MET DP873994.jpg" by Creator:Auguste Charles Pugin is licensed under CC0 1.0

Before becoming Mount Pleasant, the home of the Smallweed family in Bleak House was known as Coldbath Fields. The website Hidden London in its article "Mount Pleasant" explains that the area acquired its original name because of “the cold baths established [there] in 1697 for the cure of rheumatism, convulsions and other nervous disorders.” The notion that Mount Pleasant was once a place of refuge for those seeking rest from bodily ailments stands in stark contrast to the rest of its history. The location gained the ironic name Mount Pleasant in the eighteenth century because it became a dumping ground. By the latter half the century, Mount Pleasant also held the largest prison in England at the time: the Middlesex House of Correction. Interestingly, Hidden London notes that “The essayist Leigh Hunt and his brother John were detained here in 1812, awaiting trial for libelling the Prince Regent.” Dickens was friends with Hunt, who would go on to be the inspiration for the character Mr. Skimpole in Bleak House.

Dickens was also friends with the reformist prison governor George Chesterson. As the Charles Dickens Museum notes on its page “A Charles Dickens Walk: The Farringdon Slums by Londonist,” this friendship “enabled [Dickens] to observe the treadmills [of the prison],” which are pictured above. Dickens, not only having friends in the Middlesex House of Correction but also seeing the manual labor forced upon its prisoners, was not lost how very ironic the name Mount Pleasant was for such a location. To add the dangers of the area on top this—Hidden London notes “The neighbouring fields were the site of a protest meeting in 1833 at which a policeman was stabbed to death” for example—the humor and sadness behind the name Mount Pleasant begged for Dickens to ironically make it the bleakest home of the bleakest family in Bleak House.

Works Cited

"Mount Pleasant." Hidden London, https://hidden-london.com/gazetteer/mount-pleasant/islington/. Accessed 16 Oct 2020.

"A Charles Dickens Walk: The Farrigndon Slums by Londonist." Charles Dickens Museum, https://dickensmuseum.com/blogs/charles-dickens-museum/a-charles-dickens...Accessed 16 Oct 2020.