Charles Dickens Museum to mark its centenary with a new boss

This is a dickens of an announcement: The Charles Dickens Museum has a new boss.

The museum’s current director, Cindy Sughrue OBE has led the museum since October 2015, and will han over the reins of power to the museum’s Deputy Director, Frankie Kubicki next March, just as Charles Dickens’ house enters its centenary as a museum.

Sandra Lynes Timbrell, Chair of the Museum’s Board of Trustees, said, “We are delighted that Frankie will be our new Director. She was the standout candidate for the post and demonstrated a clear vision for the future of the Museum. We are grateful to outgoing Director Cindy Sughrue for her dedication and leadership; she transformed the Museum and, during Covid in particular, worked tirelessly to ensure its continued success. We look forward to working with Frankie when she takes up the role in March 2025 and wish Cindy well for her return to Scotland.”

Speaking about her time at the Museum, Cindy added, “It has been an honour to lead this wonderful Museum through nearly a decade of development, which has included establishing our regular programme of ambitious temporary exhibitions; securing a number of major collection acquisitions; improving and expanding our learning programme and developing a range of income streams to support all of this. We’ve raised some £4.2M for acquisitions and projects, expanded our partnerships, and increased trading income by 65% and visitor numbers by 32%, despite the pandemic setback. All of this would have been impossible without the talented and dedicated team of people who have been part of our Museum over the years. The Museum is stronger than ever.”

The museum at 48 Doughty Street is where Charles Dickens wrote the stories that made him an international superstar. The building was threatened with redevelopment into a hotel but was saved when the Dickens Fellowship secured an option to buy it in June 1922 and then raised the £10,000 mortgage to buy the property’s freehold. The house was renovated, and on 9th June 1925, the 55th anniversary of Dickens’s death, Lord Birkenhead opened it as a public museum.

At the opening, Lord Birkenhead recalled that Dickens left a condition in his will that “no monument or memorial of him should be preserved and that he was sorry that some of those who had the strongest right to hold an opinion on this point had taken the view that this memorial was not in entire agreement with the great man’s wishes,”

However, he added that he was sure that Dickens was writing about a statue and that he would have been delighted to see his old house restored back to how it was when he lived there.

In 1837, when Dickens moved into the home with his growing family, he was a budding author; by the time the family left, Dickens was world famous, following publication of a trio of wildly successful novels written in Doughty Street: The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.

In 2012, the museum doubled in size when it bought the neighbouring house which gave the museum more space for their regular exhibitions, a larger cafe and more office space for staff and the library archive.

The museum’s centenary will take place on 9th June 2025.