Unexplained death by fire in London

Reading between the lines, the victim here may have been a heavy drinker, which - as the article says - is commonly associated with such cases.

IIRC, the Dickens character in Bleak House was an alcoholic too. I remember he was played by Jonny Vegas in the BBC production.

Ahh, yes, my memory serves me well in this case:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/f...house-plot

Not surprisingly, Dickens has come in for plenty of stick for this incendiary moment. A contemporary critic, GH Lewes, quickly declared that "according to all known chemical and physiological laws, spontaneous combustion is an impossibility."

That such criticism stung is shown by the way Dickens hit back – at length, in a preface to the novel:

"The possibility of what is called spontaneous combustion has been denied since the death of Mr. Krook … I have no need to observe that I do not wilfully or negligently mislead my readers and that before I wrote that description I took pains to investigate the subject."

He goes on to list notable cases before adding: "I do not think it necessary to add to these notable facts … contenting myself with observing that I shall not abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable spontaneous combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received."