Pleasant Riderhood's Leaving Shop

This drawing is illustrates a scene from 'Our Mutual Friend' by the nineteenth-century writer Charles Dickens.

Pleasant Riderhood was a character from 'Our Mutual Friend', which was published in twenty monthly instalments between May 1864 and December 1865. Her name appears above the shop seen in the drawing, which is in fact a pawnbrokers. Pleasant worked as an unlicensed pawnbroker in Limehouse hole, where she lived with her father called Rouge. The premises are described in Dickens' text as follows:

'It was a wretched little shop, with a roof that any man standing in it could touch with his hand; little better than a cellar or cave, down three steps. Yet in its ill-lighted window, among a flaring handkerchief or two, an old peat-coat or so, a few valueless watches and compasses, a jar of tobacco and horrible sweets - these creature discomforts serving as a blind to the main business of the Leaving Shop - was displayed the inscription SEAMAN'S BOARDING HOUSE.'

This is one of a number of coloured drawings by the artist J. L. Stewart which depict locations in London. As well as fictitious buildings such as this one, he also drew actual streets and buildings in the city. 'Our Mutual Friend' was originally illustrated by the book illustrator Marcus Stone, whose father was an old friend of the author.