Biography

Major character in Charles Dickens's "Our Mutual Friend." 

"A child-minder, who takes in poor children and cares for them, including Johnny, the orphan whom the Boffins plan to adopt before he dies in the children's hospital. She is old and poor, and portrayed sympathetically as pitiable. She is so terrified of dying in the workhouse that, when she begins to grow sick, she runs away to the country and ends up dying in Lizzie Hexam's arms. Mrs Higden draws readers' attention to the miserable lives led by the poor, and the need for social reform."