6. Dickens traveled to Philadelphia by train and ferry
Travel in the America of 1842 was through several modes of conveyance, with varying degrees of comfort afforded passengers. From New York to Philadelphia Dickens chose the relatively new means of trains, a journey which required the use of ferries when water barriers were encountered. For Dickens and his party, the journey from New York to Philadelphia was a matter of, “between five and six hours”. Unlike Boston, Hartford, and New York, the older sections of which were defined by winding, narrow, and crooked streets, Philadelphia had been planned by William Penn. It featured straight, broad avenues and streets, and buildings of stone and brick in its oldest quarters.
Dickens toured another prison in Philadelphia, which kept its inmates in solitary confinement for the duration of their sentences, often for many years, though it also provided them with the tools of trade to pass the time. He was unimpressed. From Philadelphia, he embarked on a steamboat for the journey to Washington DC. On it, he encountered a group of British expatriates working as farmers in America. “Of all grades and kinds of men that jostle one in the public conveyances of the States, these are often the most intolerable and the most insufferable companions,” he wrote of his countrymen.