Oliver Twist (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Charles Dickens [238]
11 (p. 85) from the Angel... into Saffron Hill the Great: Oliver and the Artful Dodger entered London from the northeast; the Angel Inn at Islington marked the city boundary. From there they followed a path southeastward to the slums of the East End. Saffron Hill (present-day Holborn) was a notorious haunt of thieves and prostitutes.
12 (p. 103) the renowned Mr. Fang: Fang is based on the notoriously harsh London magistrate Allan Stewart Laing, whom Dickens had observed in action while working on Oliver Twist in 1837. Among Laing’s more outrageous sentences was his committal of three youths to a House of Correction for singing in the street. After much public outcry, he was removed from office in 1838.
13 (p. 141 ) the interesting pages of the Hue-and-Cry: The Police Gazette or Hue and Cry, was the official London police magazine, providing detailed information of crimes committed and criminals sought and apprehended. No doubt Fagin read this magazine in order to keep one step ahead of the police.
14 (p. 150) what you are?: Although Dickens explicitly identifies Nancy as a prostitute in his preface to the third edition of Oliver Twist (p. 13), her occupation is never more than implied in the pages of the novel.
15 (p. 155) A legal action... about a settlement: According to the 1662 Act of Settlement and Removal, each parish was responsible for its own indigent inhabitants but had no obligations to inhabitants of other parishes. In questionable cases, parishes were eager to prove that paupers were someone else’s responsibility. Bumble is escorting two paupers to the courts at Clerkenwell in the hope that the magistrates will establish their original settlement in a parish other than his own.
16 (p. 188) Bethnal Green Road: Sikes and Oliver travel southwest from the slums of Bethnal Green to the City (an area in the center of London that lies within the boundaries of the ancient city) and then through Smithfield meat market to the fashionable West End. From Kensington they travel on foot and by cart to theThameside village of Chertsey, about 25 miles west of London, in the county of Surrey.
17 (p. 204) out-of-door relief: Prior to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, paupers were given financial assistance in their own homes under a system known as out-of-door relief This system became unpopular because it encouraged employers to keep wages low, counting on the parish to provide supplementary poor relief. After 1834 paupers were required to commit themselves to the workhouse. Bumble, however, chooses to reduce the burden on the workhouse by administering out-of-door relief of such an inappropriate kind (for example, giving uncooked potatoes to a naked and homeless man) that paupers “get tired of coming.”
18 (p. 260) the runners: The forerunners of the London Metropolitan Police were known as the Bow Street Runners. By the early nineteenth century, the runners, a detective force originally set up by the magistrates of Bow Street in 1749, were viewed as poorly trained and inadequate for the task of policing the rapidly growing metropolis. They were replaced in 1839 by a professional police force instituted by Sir Robert Peel.
19 (p. 360) one brief and a motion: A brief is a case as a barrister, and a motion an application for a court ruling; the meaning is that Grimwig was unable to obtain much work as a lawyer.
20 (p. 365) homeopathic doses: Homeopathy, a form of medicine first practiced in the late eighteenth century, is founded on the principle that like cures like. Diseases are treated by the administration of minute doses of a substance that would cause healthy subjects to display symptoms of the disease. However, the tiny amounts of beef and porter given to Charlotte by Noah Claypole signify the latter’s gluttony rather than any concern for his girlfriend’s health.
21 (p. 375) transportation for life: Convicts were