Letter from Charles Dickens, London, to Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1850 April 17 : autograph manuscript signed.

Reporting that Jemima Hiscock and Mary Joynes were drunk the night before and that Mrs. Morson discharged Jemima Hiscock but kept Mary Joynes whom Dickens would visit that afternoon; adding "I have no doubt myself that they had spirits from outside. I am perfectly sure that no woman of that Jemima Hiscock's habits, could get so madly intoxicated with that weak beer. I am inclined to think, from the difference in the states of the two, that she had spirits and Mary Joynes had not. A woman was seen looking over the palings where Hannah Myers and Ellen Walsh broke out; and from certain circumstances and artifices recently observed in Jemima, I am strongly impressed with the belief that she was in communication with people outside, and wanted to lay hands upon the linen on the first convenient opportunity, after it was washed and ironed;" relating his suspicions regarding a woman on the outside who may have been in contact with Miss Hiscock; concluding "And now, what on earth is to be done with Mary Joynes? I really think Sir George Grey ought to know this. And I would most strongly suggest to you that nothing ought to induce us, ever to retain a woman whom we have seen reason to discharge. In every case in which we have shewn this vacillation (Ellen Walsh and this Jemima Hiscock being the two last) the end has been failure. And God knows how they infect the rest."