is done in Dickens’s best style,
     and was a frontal attack on the Poor Law administration of the
     time.  Bumble, indeed, has passed into common use as the
     typical workhouse official of the least satisfactory sort.  No
     less powerful than the picture of Oliver’s wretched childhood
     is the description of the thieves’ kitchen, presided over by
     Fagin.  Bill Sikes and the Artful Dodger are household words
     for criminals, and the character of Fagin is drawn with
     wonderful skill in this terrible view of the underworld of
     London.

I.—­The Parish Boy

Oliver was born in the workhouse, and his mother died the same night.  Not even a promised reward of L10 could produce any information as to the boy’s father or the mother’s name.  The woman was young, frail, and delicate—­a stranger to the parish.

“How comes he to have any name at all, then?” said Mrs. Mann (who was responsible for the early bringing up of the workhouse children) to Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle.

The beadle drew himself up with great pride, and said, “I invented it.  We name our foundings in alphabetical order.  The last was a S; Swubble I named him.  This was a T; Twist I named him.  I have got names ready made to the end of the alphabet, and all the way through it again, when we come to Z.”

“Why, you’re quite a literary character, sir,” said Mrs. Mann.

Oliver, being now nine years old, was removed from the tender mercies of Mrs. Mann, in whose wretched home not one kind word or look had ever lighted the gloom of his infant years, and was taken into the workhouse.

Now the members of the board, who were long-headed men, had just established the rule that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they) of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it.  All relief was inseparable from the workhouse, and the thin gruel issued three times a day to its inmates.

The system was in full operation for the first six months after Oliver Twist’s admission, and boys having generally excellent appetites, Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation.  Each boy had one porringer of gruel, and no more.  At last the boys got so voracious and wild with hunger, that one, who was tall for his age and hadn’t been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small cook’s shop), hinted darkly to his companions that unless he had another basin of gruel per diem he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next him, a weakly youth of tender age.  He had a wild, hungry eye, and they implicitly believed him.  A council was held, lots were cast who should walk up to the master after supper that evening and ask for more, and it fell to Oliver Twist.

The evening arrived, the boys took their places.  The master, in his cook’s uniform, stationed himself at the copper to ladle out the gruel; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him, the gruel was served out, and a long grace was said over the short commons.