Samuel Weller, fishmonger

The article explains how Charles Dickens may have encountered Samuel Weller, a defendant in the Birnie v Eliot and Weller case, which was heard at the Arches Court at Doctors Commons in early 1831 when Dickens was working there as a law reporter. The fact that Samuel Weller was a fishmonger with a Cockney accent gives credence to the scholar Cuthbert Bede’s hypothesis that the speech of Sam Weller in Pickwick Papers is based on the aphoristic style of the 1820’s comedian Sam Vale (known as “Valerisms”) because the Cockney accent adds a distinctive voice to the Valerisms with which Dickens was already familiar, as well as providing a name and surname that resembled “Sam Vale”. Sam Weller’s name and speech style may thus have emerged as a representation of the Cockney fishmonger, Samuel Weller, which blended a distinctive accent (/v/-/w/ slippage) with the aphoristic comparisons (Valerisms) that were already part of the vernacular in Surrey and London during the 1820’s.