Charles Dickens grew up in a family controlled by a father who wasn't particularly the best with money. As a consequence, John Dickens was imprisoned in Debtor's Prison in 1824. While he doesn't really make it obvious, this part of his life seems to have informed the writing of Great Expectations, and enforces the idea of Pip's and Dickens' similarity. This influences his writing of the book, in that Dickens had to take up manual labor at a blacking factory, to make shoe polish, in order to help his father and to support the Dickens family. Also, as Debtor's prison usually consisted of minimal separation between the debtors and other convicts, this gave him experience with convicts and could have helped him to write the characters of Magwitch and Compeyson.