"Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish". The colour "yellow" connotes illness and diseases, suggesting that poverty and a lack of a welfare state have led to the death of many poor people. The word "meagre" means a lack of quantity or quality, implying that the children are malnourished and undersized because of not having enough food to grow properly. "Ragged" means that they are literally wearing rags, showing how they are not dressed properly in the cold wintry season and have no warmth. The adjective "scowling" suggests that they are angry in a bad-tempered way. "Wolfish" creates an animal imagery of wolves, connoting that they are dehumanised and stripped of their innocence, and they are more like predatory animals than innocent and pure children. The shocking description of the children is based on Dickens' experience. In 1846, Dickens published a letter on Ragged Schooling in the Daily News, in which he recorded his experience of the visit of the Ragged School in London, and encouraged other people to visit these schools, to observe the lack of education and common necessities present in such places, which lead poor people to not actually being able to learn anything or overcome their absence of education. Dickens criticised the imperfect system and appealed for more money to help the poor children and allow them to exit a torturing cycle of poverty.