CHAPTER II (TREATS OF OLIVER TWIST’S GROWTH, EDUCATION, AND BOARD)

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For the next eight or ten months, Oliver was the victim
of a systematic course of treachery and deception. He
was brought up by hand. The hungry and destitute situation
of the infant orphan was duly reported by the workhouse
authorities to the parish authorities. The parish authori-
ties inquired with dignity of the workhouse authorities,
whether there was no female then domiciled in ‘the house’
who was in a situation to impart to Oliver Twist, the con-
solation and nourishment of which he stood in need. The
workhouse authorities replied with humility, that there
was not. Upon this, the parish authorities magnanimously
and humanely resolved, that Oliver should be ‘farmed,’ or,
in other words, that he should be dispatched to a branch-
workhouse some three miles off, where twenty or thirty
other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws, rolled about
the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much
food or too much clothing, under the parental superinten-
dence of an elderly female, who received the culprits at and
for the consideration of sevenpence-halfpenny per small
head per week. Sevenpence-halfpenny’s worth per week is
a good round diet for a child; a great deal may be got for
sevenpence-halfpenny, quite enough to overload its stom-
ach, and make it uncomfortable. The elderly female was a
woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good
for children; and she had a very accurate perception of what
was good for herself. So, she appropriated the greater part of
the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned the rising
parochial generation to even a shorter allowance than was
originally provided for them. Thereby finding in the lowest
depth a deeper still; and proving herself a very great experi-
mental philosopher.
Everybody knows the story of another experimental phi-
losopher who had a great theory about a horse being able
to live without eating, and who demonstrated it so well,
that he had got his own horse down to a straw a day, and
would unquestionably have rendered him a very spirited
and rampacious animal on nothing at all, if he had not died,
four-and-twenty hours before he was to have had his first
comfortable bait of air. Unfortunately for, the experimenal
philosophy of the female to whose protecting care Oliver
Twist was delivered over, a similar result usually attended
the operation of HER system; for at the very moment when
the child had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible
portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely hap-
pen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened
from want and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got
half-smothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the
miserable little being was usually summoned into another
world, and there gathered to the fathers it had never known
in this.
Occasionally, when there was some more than usually
interesting inquest upon a parish child who had been over-
looked in turning up a bedstead, or inadvertently scalded
to death when there happened to be a washing—though
the latter accident was very scarce, anything approaching
to a washing being of rare occurance in the farm—the jury
would take it into their heads to ask troublesome questions,
or the parishioners would rebelliously affix their signatures
to a remonstrance. But these impertinences were speedily
checked by the evidence of the surgeon, and the testimony
of the beadle; the former of whom had always opened the
body and found nothing inside (which was very probable
indeed), and the latter of whom invariably swore whatever
the parish wanted; which was very self-devotional. Besides,
the board made periodical pilgrimages to the farm, and al-
ways sent the beadle the day before, to say they were going.
The children were neat and clean to behold, when THEY
went; and what more would the people have!
It cannot be expected that this system of farming would
produce any very extraordinary or luxuriant crop. Oli-
ver Twist’s ninth birthday found him a pale thin child,
somewhat diminutive in stature, and decidely small in cir-
cumference. But nature or inheritance had implanted a good
sturdy spirit in Oliver’s breast. It had had plenty of room to
expand, thanks to the spare diet of the establishment; and
perhaps to this circumstance may be attributed his having
any ninth birth-day at all. Be this as it may, however, it was
his ninth birthday; and he was keeping it in the coal-cellar
with a select party of two other young gentleman, who, af-
ter participating with him in a sound thrashing, had been
locked up for atrociously presuming to be hungry, when
Mrs. Mann, the good lady of the house, was unexpectedly
startled by the apparition of Mr. Bumble, the beadle, striv-
ing to undo the wicket of the garden-gate.
‘Goodness gracious! Is that you, Mr. Bumble, sir?’ said
Mrs. Mann, thrusting her head out of the window in well-
affected ecstasies of joy. ‘(Susan, take Oliver and them two
brats upstairs, and wash ‘em directly.)—My heart alive! Mr.
Bumble, how glad I am to see you, sure-ly!’
Now, Mr. Bumble was a fat man, and a choleric; so, in-
stead of responding to this open-hearted salutation in a
kindred spirit, he gave the little wicket a tremendous shake,
and then bestowed upon it a kick which could have ema-
nated from no leg but a beadle’s.
‘Lor, only think,’ said Mrs. Mann, running out,—for the
three boys had been removed by this time,—‘only think of
that! That I should have forgotten that the gate was bolted
on the inside, on account of them dear children! Walk in
sir; walk in, pray, Mr. Bumble, do, sir.’
Although this invitation was accompanied with a curt-
sey that might have softened the heart of a church-warden,
it by no means mollified the beadle.
‘Do you think this respectful or proper conduct, Mrs.
Mann,’ inquired Mr. Bumble, grasping his cane, ‘to keep
the parish officers a waiting at your garden-gate, when they
come here upon porochial business with the porochial or-
phans? Are you aweer, Mrs. Mann, that you are, as I may say,
a porochial delegate, and a stipendiary?’
‘I’m sure Mr. Bumble, that I was only a telling one or two
of the dear children as is so fond of you, that it was you a
coming,’ replied Mrs. Mann with great humility.
Mr. Bumble had a great idea of his oratorical powers and
his importance. He had displayed the one, and vindicated
the other. He relaxed.
‘Well, well, Mrs. Mann,’ he replied in a calmer tone; ‘it
may be as you say; it may be. Lead the way in, Mrs. Mann,
for I come on business, and have something to say.’
Mrs. Mann ushered the beadle into a small parlour with
a brick floor; placed a seat for him; and officiously deposited
his cocked hat and can on the table before him. Mr. Bumble
wiped from his forehead the perspiration which his walk
had engendered, glanced complacently at the cocked hat,
and smiled. Yes, he smiled. Beadles are but men: and Mr.
Bumble smiled.
‘Now don’t you be offended at what I’m a going to say,’
observed Mrs. Mann, with captivating sweetness. ‘You’ve
had a long walk, you know, or I wouldn’t mention it. Now,
will you take a little drop of somethink, Mr. Bumble?’
‘Not a drop. Nor a drop,’ said Mr. Bumble, waving his
right hand in a dignified, but placid manner.
‘I think you will,’ said Mrs. Mann, who had noticed the
tone of the refusal, and the gesture that had accompanied
it. ‘Just a leetle drop, with a little cold water, and a lump of
sugar.’
Mr. Bumble coughed.
‘Now, just a leetle drop,’ said Mrs. Mann persuasively.
‘What is it?’ inquired the beadle.
‘Why, it’s what I’m obliged to keep a little of in the house,
to put into the blessed infants’ Daffy, when they ain’t well,
Mr. Bumble,’ replied Mrs. Mann as she opened a corner
cupboard, and took down a bottle and glass. ‘It’s gin. I’ll
not deceive you, Mr. B. It’s gin.’
‘Do you give the children Daffy, Mrs. Mann?’ inquired
Bumble, following with this eyes the interesting process of
mixing.
‘Ah, bless ‘em, that I do, dear as it is,’ replied the nurse. ‘I
couldn’t see ‘em suffer before my very eyes, you know sir.’
‘No’; said Mr. Bumble approvingly; ‘no, you could not.
You are a humane woman, Mrs. Mann.’ (Here she set down
the glass.) ‘I shall take a early opportunity of mentioning it
to the board, Mrs. Mann.’ (He drew it towards him.) ‘You
feel as a mother, Mrs. Mann.’ (He stirred the gin-and-wa-
ter.) ‘I—I drink your health with cheerfulness, Mrs. Mann’;
and he swallowed half of it.
‘And now about business,’ said the beadle, taking out a
leathern pocket-book. ‘The child that was half-baptized Ol-
iver Twist, is nine year old to-day.;
‘Bless him!’ interposed Mrs. Mann, inflaming her left eye
with the corner of her apron.
‘And notwithstanding a offered reward of ten pound,
which was afterwards increased to twenty pound. Notwith-
standing the most superlative, and, I may say, supernat’ral
exertions on the part of this parish,’ said Bumble, ‘we have
never been able to discover who is his father, or what was
his mother’s settlement, name, or con—dition.’
Mrs Mann raised her hands in astonishment; but add-
ed, after a moment’s reflection, ‘How comes he to have any
name at all, then?’
The beadle drew himself up with great pride, and said, ‘I
inwented it.’
‘You, Mr. Bumble!’
‘I, Mrs. Mann. We name our fondlings in alphabetical
order. The last was a S,—Swubble, I named him. This was a
T,—Twist, I named HIM. The next one comes will be Unwin,
and the next Vilkins. 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.
‘Well, well,’ said the beadle, evidently gratified with the
compliment; ‘perhaps I may be. Perhaps I may be, Mrs.
Mann.’ He finished the gin-and-water, and added, ‘Oliver
being now too old to remain here, the board have deter-
mined to have him back into the house. I have come out
myself to take him there. So let me see him at once.’
‘I’ll fetch him directly,’ said Mrs. Mann, leaving the room
for that purpose. Oliver, having had by this time as much of
the outer coat of dirt which encrusted his face and hands,
removed, as could be scrubbed off in one washing, was led
into the room by his benevolent protectress.
‘Make a bow to the gentleman, Oliver,’ said Mrs. Mann.
Oliver made a bow, which was divided between the bea-
dle on the chair, and the cocked hat on the table.
‘Will you go along with me, Oliver?’ said Mr. Bumble, in
a majestic voice.
Oliver was about to say that he would go along with
anybody with great readiness, when, glancing upward, he
caught sight of Mrs. Mann, who had got behind the beadle’s
chair, and was shaking her fist at him with a furious coun-
tenance. He took the hint at once, for the fist had been too
often impressed upon his body not to be deeply impressed
upon his recollection.
‘Will she go with me?’ inquired poor Oliver.
‘No, she can’t,’ replied Mr. Bumble. ‘But she’ll come and
see you sometimes.’
This was no very great consolation to the child. Young
as he was, however, he had sense enough to make a feint
of feeling great regret at going away. It was no very diffi-
cult matter for the boy to call tears into his eyes. Hunger
and recent ill-usage are great assistants if you want to cry;
and Oliver cried very naturally indeed. Mrs. Mann gave
him a thousand embraces, and what Oliver wanted a great
deal more, a piece of bread and butter, less he should seem
too hungry when he got to the workhouse. With the slice
of bread in his hand, and the little brown-cloth parish cap
on his head, Oliver was then led away by Mr. Bumble from
the wretched home where one kind word or look had never
lighted the gloom of his infant years. And yet he burst into
an agony of childish grief, as the cottage-gate closed after
him. Wretched as were the little companions in misery he
was leaving behind, they were the only friends he had ever
known; and a sense of his loneliness in the great wide world,
sank into the child’s heart for the first time.
Mr. Bumble walked on with long strides; little Oliver,
firmly grasping his gold-laced cuff, trotted beside him, in-
quiring at the end of every quarter of a mile whether they
were ‘nearly there.’ To these interrogations Mr. Bumble re-
turned very brief and snappish replies; for the temporary
blandness which gin-and-water awakens in some bosoms
had by this time evaporated; and he was once again a bea-
dle.
Oliver had not been within the walls of the workhouse a
quarter of an hour, and had scarcely completed the demoli-
tion of a second slice of bread, when Mr. Bumble, who had
handed him over to the care of an old woman, returned;
and, telling him it was a board night, informed him that the
board had said he was to appear before it forthwith.
Not having a very clearly defined notion of what a live
board was, Oliver was rather astounded by this intelligence,
and was not quite certain whether he ought to laugh or cry.
He had no time to think about the matter, however; for Mr.
Bumble gave him a tap on the head, with his cane, to wake
him up: and another on the back to make him lively: and
bidding him to follow, conducted him into a large white-
washed room, where eight or ten fat gentlemen were sitting
round a table. At the top of the table, seated in an arm-chair
rather higher than the rest, was a particularly fat gentleman
with a very round, red face.
‘Bow to the board,’ said Bumble. Oliver brushed away
two or three tears that were lingering in his eyes; and seeing
no board but the table, fortunately bowed to that.
‘What’s your name, boy?’ said the gentleman in the high
chair.
Oliver was frightened at the sight of so many gentlemen,
which made him tremble: and the beadle gave him another
tap behind, which made him cry. These two causes made
him answer in a very low and hesitating voice; whereupon
a gentleman in a white waistcoat said he was a fool. Which
was a capital way of raising his spirits, and putting him
quite at his ease.
‘Boy,’ said the gentleman in the high chair, ‘listen to me.
You know you’re an orphan, I suppose?’
‘What’s that, sir?’ inquired poor Oliver.
‘The boy IS a fool—I thought he was,’ said the gentleman
in the white waistcoat.
‘Hush!’ said the gentleman who had spoken first. ‘You
know you’ve got no father or mother, and that you were
brought up by the parish, don’t you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Oliver, weeping bitterly.
‘What are you crying for?’ inquired the gentleman in the
white waistcoat. And to be sure it was very extraordinary.
What COULD the boy be crying for?
‘I hope you say your prayers every night,’ said another
gentleman in a gruff voice; ‘and pray for the people who
feed you, and take care of you—like a Christian.’
‘Yes, sir,’ stammered the boy. The gentleman who spoke
last was unconsciously right. It would have been very like a
Christian, and a marvellously good Christian too, if Oliver
had prayed for the people who fed and took care of HIM.
But he hadn’t, because nobody had taught him.
‘Well! You have come here to be educated, and taught
a useful trade,’ said the red-faced gentleman in the high
chair.
‘So you’ll begin to pick oakum to-morrow morning at six
o’clock,’ added the surly one in the white waistcoat.
For the combination of both these blessings in the one
simple process of picking oakum, Oliver bowed low by the
direction of the beadle, and was then hurried away to a
large ward; where, on a rough, hard bed, he sobbed himself
to sleep. What a novel illustration of the tender laws of Eng-
land! They let the paupers go to sleep!
Poor Oliver! He little thought, as he lay sleeping in hap-
py unconsciousness of all around him, that the board had
that very day arrived at a decision which would exercise the
most material influence over all his future fortunes. But
they had. And this was it:
The members of this board were very sage, deep, philo-
sophical men; and when they came to turn their attention
to the workhouse, they found out at once, what ordinary
folks would nver have discovered—the poor people liked it!
It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer
classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay; a pub-
lic breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round; a
brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work.
‘Oho!’ said the board, looking very knowing; ‘we are the fel-
lows to set this to rights; we’ll stop it all, in no time.’ So,
they 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. With this view, they contracted with
the water-works to lay on an unlimited supply of water; and
with a corn-factor to supply periodically small quantities of
oatmeal; and issued three meals of thin gruel a day, with an
onion twice a week, and half a roll of Sundays. They made
a great many other wise and humane regulations, having
reference to the ladies, which it is not necessary to repeat;
kindly undertook to divorce poor married people, in conse-
quence of the great expense of a suit in Doctors’ Commons;
and, instead of compelling a man to support his family, as
they had theretofore done, took his family away from him,
and made him a bachelor! There is no saying how many ap-
plicants for relief, under these last two heads, might have
started up in all classes of society, if it had not been coupled
with the workhouse; but the board were long-headed men,
and had provided for this difficulty. The relief was insepara-
ble from the workhouse and the gruel; and that frightened
people.
For the first six months after Oliver Twist was removed,
the system was in full operation. It was rather expensive at
first, in consequence of the increase in the undertaker’s bill,
and the necessity of taking in the clothes of all the paupers,
which fluttered loosely on their wasted, shrunken forms,
after a week or two’s gruel. But the number of workhouse
inmates got thin as well as the paupers; and the board were
in ecstasies.
The room in which the boys were fed, was a large stone
hall, with a copper at one end: out of which the master,
dressed in an apron for the purpose, and assisted by one or
two women, ladled the gruel at mealtimes. Of this festive
composition each boy had one porringer, and no more—ex-
cept on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he had two
ounces and a quarter of bread besides.
The bowls never wanted washing. The boys polished
them with their spoons till they shone again; and when
they had performed this operation (which never took very
long, the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls), they
would sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if
they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was
composed; employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking
their fingers most assiduously, with the view of catching up
any stray splashes of gruel that might have been cast there-
on. Boys have generally excellent appetites. Oliver Twist
and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation
for three months: at last they got so voracious and wild with
hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his age, and hadn’t
been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a
small cook-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, who happened to be 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 mas-
ter, in his cook’s uniform, stationed himself at the copper;
his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the
gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over the
short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered
each other, and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbours
nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hun-
ger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and
advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said:
somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:
‘Please, sir, I want some more.’
The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very
pale. He gazed in stupified astonishment on the small rebel
for some seconds, and then clung for support to the cop-
per. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys
with fear.
‘What!’ said the master at length, in a faint voice.
‘Please, sir,’ replied Oliver, ‘I want some more.’
The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle;
pinioned him in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the bea-
dle.
The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr.
Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and ad-
dressing the gentleman in the high chair, said,
‘Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has
asked for more!’
There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every
countenance.
‘For MORE!’ said Mr. Limbkins. ‘Compose yourself,
Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he
asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the
dietary?’
‘He did, sir,’ replied Bumble.
‘That boy will be hung,’ said the gentleman in the white
waistcoat. ‘I know that boy will be hung.’
Nobody controverted the prophetic gentleman’s opinion.
An animated discussion took place. Oliver was ordered into
instant confinement; and a bill was next morning pasted on
the outside of the gate, offering a reward of five pounds to
anybody who would take Oliver Twist off the hands of the
parish. In other words, five pounds and Oliver Twist were
offered to any man or woman who wanted an apprentice to
any trade, business, or calling.
‘I never was more convinced of anything in my life,’ said
the gentleman in the white waistcoat, as he knocked at the
gate and read the bill next morning: ‘I never was more con-
vinced of anything in my life, than I am that that boy will
come to be hung.’
As I purpose to show in the sequel whether the white
waistcoated gentleman was right or not, I should perhaps
mar the interest of this narrative (supposing it to possess
any at all), if I ventured to hint just yet, whether the life of
Oliver Twist had this violent termination or no.

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