Abel Magwitch must have first seen the convicts who worked at unloading, and the marshes at Cooling, north-east of Chatham, off which the galley ships lay - scenes which would play a part in the story of his fictional self, Pip, and Pip's benefactor, Magwitch. Abel Magwitch Abel Magwitch is a fictional character from Charles Dickens's 1861 novel, "Great Expectations". Charles Dickens set his story in about 1800, setting his character Abel Magwitch to meet a man called Compeyson at the Epsom Races. Compeyson, Dickens wrote, had been brought up in a boarding school and was an attractive, charming gentleman. Magwitch, at
John Dickens John Dickens John Dickens (21 August 1785 – 31 March 1851) was the father of English novelist Charles Dickens and was the model for Mr Micawber in his son's semi-autobiographical novel "David Copperfield". The son of William Dickens (1719–1785) and Elizabeth Ball (1745–1824), John Dickens was a clerk in the Royal Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth in Hampshire. On 13 June 1809 at St Mary le Strand, London, he married Elizabeth Barrow, with whom he had eight children. He was later transferred to London and then to Chatham, returning to live in Camden Town in London in 1822 to work