Georgina Hogarth - Controversy

Controversy

In January 2009 The Times and other newspapers reported on a diamond ring which it was claimed was once owned by Charles Dickens and which was cited as evidence that he had an illegitimate child with Georgina Hogarth. At that time a sexual relationship with a sister-in-law was classed as incest under the law and was a criminal offence. The previously undocumented gold ring, set with a single 0.9-carat (180 mg) diamond, was auctioned in February 2009 realising a hammer price of £26,000. It sold to an anonymous collector from Northern Ireland. According to an inscription, the ring was presented to Dickens by Alfred Lord Tennyson, the Poet Laureate and a close personal friend, in 1854.

The article reports that the ring later became the proud possession of Hector Charles Bulwer Lytton Dickens, who had always claimed to be the novelist's illegitimate son through a relationship with Georgina Hogarth. The ring was being sold by Hector Dickens's descendants, along with letters, two wills and various newspaper reports which they state support his claim. His family claim that in 1890 Hector Dickens bought the ring from one of Dickens's legitimate sons, Alfred Dickens, who lived in Australia for 45 years and who is said to have fallen on hard times.

Florian Schweizer, the curator of the Charles Dickens Museum in London's Doughty Street is recorded as saying that if genuine the ring could turn Dickens history "...on its head... There have been rumours of them having an affair but it has never been substantiated because there has never been any reliable evidence emerge. They lived together for the last 13 years with Georgina as a friend and companion, but Dickens also had a mistress at the time."

However, Claire Tomalin, who wrote a biography of Ellen Ternan, allegedly another of Dickens's mistresses, questioned the claim. In her book The Invisible Woman she stated that 'Hector Dickens' was probably an Australian conman called Charly Peters who used the then current rumours of Dickens's infidelities to trick people out of money.