Ramsgate was a tourist destination in the 1870s and its Sands werea chief attraction.

There was no help coming from the Relieving Officer, just intrusive and demeaning enquiries or a ticket for the Workhouse.

The marine store dealt in junk. Dickens says it was inconceivable that anyone would want to buy the sort of junk found there.

In the late nineteenth-century, the poor would pawn belongings such as clothes and shoes just to pay for food.