What would Charles Dickens have made of the modern City of Westminster, or Olympian Paris for that matter? Two hundred years ago he became well acquainted with the present Archdiocese of Westminster while his father was in debtors’ prison just over the river in Southwark. As a man of generally anti-Catholic disposition, the younger Dickens would no doubt have been disturbed by how a particular road in Westminster would develop.
In his day, one end of Victoria Street combined the establishment splendour of the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey. The other end of the newly built thoroughfare was occupied by Victoria Station and a house of correction for women and juveniles. In the late 19th century the Tothill Fields site was redeveloped as Westminster Cathedral. The neighbourhood around it is now home to a shopping centre and, as always, the homeless.
