American Toby Jug Museum 

Old London square jug produced by Royal Doulton of Burslem, England, between 1949-1960. Old London, the London of the mid-nineteenth century, is the setting for many of Charles Dickens' novels. Through his works, Dickens provides an accurate picture of the London of his day to the rest of the world. In one of his novels, Dickens describes Old London as follows: "There were a good many small shops; but the only stock in trade appeared to be heaps of children, who, even at that time of night, were crawling in and out at the doors, or screaming from the inside. The sole places that seemed to prosper amid the general blight of the place were the public-houses; and in them, the lower orders of Irish were wrangling with might and main. Covered ways and yards, which here and there diverged from the main street, disclosed little knots of houses, where drunken men and women were positively wallowing in filth; and from several of the door-ways great ill-looking fellows were cautiously emerging, bound, to all appearance, on no very well-disposed or harmless errands."