Whether or not this essay 'literally and exactly' describes, as Dickens claims, something that actually happened to him as a little boy, his childhood fascination with the slum neighbourhood of St Giles, the notorious rookery at the southern end of Tottenham Court Road, is well documented (see Vol. I of the Dent edition of Dickens's Journalism, p. 70): '"Good Heaven!" he would exclaim, "what wild visions of prodigies of wickedness, want, and beggary, arose in my mind out of that place!" (Forster, Book I, Ch. I).
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