A Child of the Jago

A Child of the Jago recounts the brief life of Dicky Perrott, a child growing up in the "Old Jago", a fictionalization of the Old Nichol, a slum located between Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road in the East End of London. The Jago is a London slum where crime and violence are the only way of life, and from which there is no escape for the inhabitants. At the start of the novel Dicky Perrott is about 8 years old, undernourished and roaming the streets, forced to do whatever it takes in order to survive. Dicky's affectionate nature and willingness to work provides a glimmer of hope that he can escape from the corruption of the Jago, but this hope is cynically thwarted by the avaricious Weech. The criminalizing of innocence in an environment of poverty and crime echoes the predicament of Oliver Twist. Arthur Morrison (1863-1945) was an English writer and journalist known for his realistic novels and stories about working-class life in London's East End, A Child of the Jago being the best known. Morrison is also known for his detective stories, featuring the detective Martin Hewitt, low-key, realistic, lower class answer to Sherlock Holmes. Martin Hewitt stories are similar in style to those of Conan Doyle, cleverly plotted and very amusing, while the character himself is a bit less arrogant and a bit more charming than Holmes.