NEW YORK ― As I listened to the news coming out of England after the recent wave of urban riots ― and as I read Robert Douglas - Fairhurst ’ s compelling new biography of Charles Dickens , “ Becoming Dickens ” ― life and art seemed to be echoing each other . In the wake of the riots , British Prime Minister David Cameron has proposed reviving children ’ s courts , urged harsh sentences and orange jumpsuits for convicts , and floated even more odious ideas . For example , convicts could be intentionally exposed to public harassment through cleanup assignments , and their families , who have not committed crimes , could be evicted from their state - subsidized housing . Cameron is also testing arrests for Facebook comments , the suspension of social networks , and more lethal power for police . In Dickens ’ England , the judiciary was not independent , and newspapers were subject to state censorship . Kids ( like Oliver Twist ) were punished in ways designed to break them ; poor people convicted of relatively minor offenses were transported to Australia , or given publicly humiliating forms of punishment ; police had unchecked and violent power over the poor . I am not endorsing leniency for looters and thugs ; but we already know where the raft of punitive legislation that Cameron is proposing , and his efforts to exploit civil unrest to clamp down on civil liberties , would lead the country . Likewise , we already know what an England without a social safety net ― where the poor have no hope and no mobility ― looks like . Public education barely existed for the “ lower orders ” 150 years ago , and university was a fantasy for them ― as it could well be again , with tuition fees set to triple under Cameron . In “ Becoming Dickens , ” Douglas - Fairhurst , rejecting recent “ poststructuralist ” literary theory , reexamines Dickens and his England within their historical and political contexts . This approach yields valuable insights ― and not a moment too soon . Such “ historicist ” interpretations of Victorian London have also appeared recently in the fascinating current exhibit at the Wellcome Collection , “ Dirt : The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life , ” and in Bill Bryson ’ s new bestseller , “ At Home , ” which examines the social history surrounding a Victorian curate ’ s manor . The renewed interest in Victorian social history ― what people ate and wore , who worked for whom , etc . , as opposed to the history of battles and “ great men ” ― may not be a coincidence . Western capitalist societies , especially the United Kingdom and the United States , are currently in the process of spooling time backward to the pre - Victorian era , for the benefit of a small group of elites that excludes the working and middle classes who benefited most from the Victorians ’ social , economic , and political reforms ― let alone the poor . As a result , it has become urgent to remember that it was the later Victorians who recognized modernity ’ s moral dimension , originating almost every kind of public reform that we now take for granted as the mark of a civilized society . Early Victorian reality ― destitute street children , raging cholera epidemics , and mounds of uncollected “ night soil ” in the streets ― was a highly “ privatized ” reality . In the 1830 s , as Douglas - Fairhust movingly demonstrates , boys and girls who came from economically vulnerable families could find themselves unschooled and working 18 hours a day in blacking factories , like the 12 - year - old Dickens . People who did not pay their creditors were sent ― with their families ― to debtors ’ prisons , as John Dickens , Charles ’ father , was for owing 40 pounds . Elderly people with no means of support died in rags in alleyways , while lower - middle - class families , with no unemployment insurance or welfare benefits , were perpetually in terror of illness or layoff , which would mean “ ruin ” and , possibly , being turned out into the street . London in the 1830 s was a city in which a third of women were servants and another third were prostitutes . A massive gap between the elites and everyone else ensured that the top echelons of literature , business and politics were managed by the wealthy few , and that the talents that would emerge a generation later , in the wake of wider state - funded education , were suppressed . And this is more or less what all of England looked like without a social safety net . In contrast , the later Victorians , from the 1850 s - 1880 s , created major public works and public - welfare initiatives , including state - funded infirmary networks and compulsory primary education . They expanded a system of workhouses and poor relief for the destitute , built up municipal water and sewage systems , municipalized police forces , and oversaw public investment in landmarks that are still with us , such as the Thames Embankment and the Victoria and Albert Museum . Likewise , with tens of thousands of street children entirely dependent for food on what they could scavenge or steal , the later Victorians established systems of orphanages . They commissioned the first epidemiological surveys to identify the source of cholera outbreaks ― which could wipe out half the population of a neighborhood in a matter of weeks ― and built new waterworks to stop the spread of the disease from the filthy Thames and tainted local pumps . They built the first major public hospitals at a time when home births and other home care spread contagion and death . In today ’ s advanced capitalist democracies , most citizens ’ obliviousness to this history serves elite interests ; otherwise , many more people , if not most , would be screaming bloody murder at increasingly successful efforts to shrink the public sector . As Cameron and other Western conservatives intensify their efforts to clear a path to the past , it is important to bear in mind that there is nothing novel or innovative about the absence of a welfare state and the privatization of basic services . We have been there already ― indeed , much of what is now being dismantled in Britain was built in the Victorian era because of appalling social conditions for most people . If today ’ s conservative political forces remain in power , the dark , dangerous , and ignorant past is where England ― and other Western countries ― risks returning . By Naomi Wolf Naomi Wolf is a political activist and social critic whose most recent book is “ Give Me Liberty : A Handbook for American Revolutionaries . ” ― Ed . ( Project Syndicate )