Previouly Unseen Photograph of Sale of Charles Dickens's Belongings on Display

Today, on the 155th anniversary of the death of Charles Dickens, a previously unpublished photograph of the sale of his goods at his Gad's Hill home goes on show at the London museum where he once lived.

At 1pm on August 10, 1870, two months after Charles Dickens died, a great sale of his possessions began in the grounds of his home at Gad’s Hill in Rochester, Kent, itself sold earlier in the month. A 24.5cm x 19.5cm albumen print photograph, taken by Kent photographer and chemist Edward Banes, captures the moment that the final lot, a table used as the auctioneer’s rostrum during the sale, was sold. 

One of the first, if not the first picture of a house sale taking place, it has never been published. It was purchased by the Museum in December 2024 from Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers, for £2,800, thanks to funding from The Dickens Fellowship. It is now on display exactly 100 years since the Charles Dickens Museum opened its doors for the first time.

Run over four days and featuring 1187 lots, the house sale was immensely popular. Among the items sold were several of the pieces of furniture which began the museum’s collections, including the mahogany sideboard from his dining room, three chairs which sit in his drawing room, a leather-topped rosewood table from his library at Gad's Hill, and Dickens’s armchair.

The Photographic News of August 19, 1870, reported how the photograph came to be taken:

"At the close of the sale of the effects of the late Charles Dickens at Gad’s Hill Place, Mr. Ball, a gentleman who has been a large purchaser, requested Mr. Franklin Homan, the auctioneer, before putting up as the last lot, the small table which he had before him during the sale, to consent to have his photograph taken with the table before him, as he had stood for four days ably and courteously conducting the sale of so many interesting souvenirs of the great novelist. Mr. Homan having consented, Mr. Ball at once bid ten pounds for the table, worth intrinsically as many shillings, and expressed his intention of having the best possible photograph taken as a souvenir of the event of the four preceding days."

“This is a vivid and fascinating record of a moment in time that was absolutely pivotal for the museum," said Emma Harper, exhibition curator. "Many of the items sold on those four days in August 1870 are now here in the historic rooms of this house. We are so excited to have been able to find and acquire the photograph and to display it for the first time on a very special occasion thanks to the generosity of The Dickens Fellowship”

To mark this significant date, the museum and its special centenary exhibition is open free of charge to all visitors and each of the historic rooms where Dickens and his family lived, are guest-stewarded by a member of Dickens’s family. Among the members of the Dickens family welcoming visitors and reading from their ancestor’s books in his home are Lucinda Dickens Hawksley (great-great-great-granddaughter); Mark Dickens (great-great-grandson); Ian Dickens (great-great-grandson); Gerald Dickens (great-great-grandson); Ollie Dickens (great-great-great-grandson).

Frankie Kubicki, Director of the Charles Dickens Museum, added: “On our 100th birthday, there is every chance that you will hear the words of Oliver Twist in the room in which it was written, read to you by Dickens’s great-great-great grandson, or take a seat in the Dickens family drawing room alongside his great-great-great granddaughter."