Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past
- Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past
- Blogs
- Luke King-Russell
Malton Dickensian Festival
Posted on 31 May 2022
Luke King-Russell, MA Public History 2021/22
When I first found out that I was assigned the Malton Dickensian Festival for my placement, I’ll be honest in saying that initially, I was a bit disappointed. I knew nothing about Charles Dickens and his novels. The only thing that I already knew about anything Dickens related is that a Muppets Christmas Carol is essential festive viewing, but it's not super related, so being assigned tasks related to “Boz” was a little daunting. That being said, there was something about the assignment that made me flirt with the idea of working with the Malton Dickensian Festival. By undertaking this placement, I would essentially be given permission to jump down all sorts of rabbit holes in search of information about Alfred Dickens, Charles Dickens’ lesser-known younger brother. Obviously, there was more to this. With the information I was to gain, I had to write an article about Alfred and his connections to Malton, as well as design a heritage trail around Malton.
Within a few weeks of starting this project, you could say I had fallen head over heels with the assignment and developed an attachment to Alfred. By reading Charles's letters to and about his brother, I was getting a keen sense of what Alfred was like. Developing this research further, by visiting archives, sifting through newspapers, and stumbling upon some surprising websites, not only could I situate Alfred’s movements in Yorkshire in the 1840’s I could also piece together what kind of person Alfred was like with those around him. From what I could gather, Alfred was an upstanding guy with a light-hearted side, it was hard not to like him. However, when I came to the conclusion of Charles’ letters that mentioned his brother, I was devasted reading about Alfred’s early death and the heartbreak this caused for the family and those who knew him.
After this point, I felt a sense of duty in what I was doing. No longer was I just having a bit of fun rambling through online archives and the streets of Malton on a cheeky field trip, I was piecing together how I could highlight who Alfred was, and how important he was to Malton. Don’t get me wrong, Charles Dickens is clearly important to Malton’s heritage identity with the Dickensian Festival. Through my research, however, Alfred had clearly intently given more, whereas Dickens was inspired by Malton, and did not help develop it as Alfred had done. Therefore, I set out to do three things with my article. The first was to give the reader an idea of who Alfred was and what was he like, showing his industrious side, his dutiful side and more importantly, his human and lighthearted side which shines through the sources I could gather about him. The second was to show the relationship between the Dickens brothers, as my research implied that Alfred was important for inspiring elements of some of Charles's novels like David Copperfield. Lastly, I was to show important Alfred was to the town of Malton, the most obvious thing he did was assist in building the railway that runs through the town. However, I also found something that I had not found in any other article, that Alfred had designed the town's corn exchange, a small centre for agricultural commerce. In doing this, I felt I was doing what I set out to do, that being to highlight the forgotten Dickens.
Of course, I also had a heritage trail to do, which felt second to the article writing as that took up the majority of my time and efforts. If anything, it served as a bit of creative respite. No longer was I working with endless written accounts, instead I was situating them on a map. As a matter of fact, I took this one step further. My supervisors only wanted a heritage trail around Malton. I took this an extra level or two, developing three separate trails, one for York, one for Malton and one for the whole of Yorkshire.
To sum up my experience, I thoroughly enjoyed it. After a term of theory, I was ready to put my knowledge to practice and the placement does just that. In my case, I was using history research skills from my undergraduate and giving it purpose with public history. Not only that, but absolutely enjoyed writing the article, so much so I felt it's given me some direction in how I can possibly continue this in the form of a full-time career.