What was Oliver's childhood like?

Oliver's early life was filled with poverty and thieving.

From the text:

“Behold Oliver,” he would say, addressing himself. “You who began life in a filthy little alley, you who . . . ”

But he dismantled himself often and became again a little boy in a dark alley. He had once thought that the height of his ambition — selling stolen dogs to fashionable women in Whitechapel. And once he had been done. “Oh, Oliver,” his mother had wailed. “Oh, Oliver! When will you have sense, my son?”