Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Portsmouth in Hampshire, the second of eight children to John Dickens (1786 – 1851), a clerk in the Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth, and his wife Elizabeth Dickens (née Barrow, 1789 – 1863) on February 7 1812. When he was five, the family moved to Chatham, Kent. In 1822, when he was ten, the family relocated to 16 Bayham Street, Camden Town in London.