Oliver Twist of Sheffield?

[Falls]

Oliver Twist of Sheffield ?

 

Most people must have heard of Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens classic story. Even if you haven’t read the book, you must have at least seen the film or perhaps even the musical. But there is something about the story line that I’ve always had doubts about.

 

For example, Oliver’s place of birth has been something of a mystery. Even Dickens didn’t seem to be too sure and rather than admit it, he fell back on an old writer/journalist ploy by saying,

 

“A certain town that for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning and to which I will assign no fictitious name.”

 

In other words: “Never let facts get in the way of a good story”.

 

Then there was London as the actual location for the greater part of the story. Did all this really happen in London or could it just as easily have happened in – say - Sheffield?

 

The story was originally published in Bentley’s Miscellany as a serial, in monthly instalments, from February 1837 to April 1839. This was a London publication directed, principally, at a London/South of England readership. Now Dickens, in addition to being a great writer was also a realist. Even then, he knew that if he used a geographic location in any of his story that was north of Watford, he would have lost his “Southern” readership in an instant.

 

So Sheffield was out and London was in.

 

Therefore, before Mr. Dickens succumbed to the Southern-only phobia, let’s assume that his original draft went something like this…….

 

 

 

Oliver was born in 1825, at a workhouse in the Township of Brightside Bierlow, Parish of Sheffield. At the time, this particular institution was located at the upper end of Rock Street - see Sheffield map of 1823. His mother’s untimely death orphaned him at birth and launched into a life of poverty and misfortune. The record of his birth in St Peter's church make no mention of his father. The Poor laws of the time offered very little for children like Oliver and he spent the early years of his life in what someone once described as a “Baby Factory” run by a Mrs Mann. This building may have also been I attached to the workhouse or very close to it, but its precise location is not known. There is no indication that he learned to read or write in this place.

 

Oliver grew up a pale thin child, small in stature but his ancestry endowed him with a tenacious spirit. Only the fittest survived in a workhouse environment. When he was about nine years of age, Oliver came to the attention of Mr. Bumble, the Beagle (workhouse overseer) who had him moved back to the workhouse proper. This was where his mother worked before she died and where he had been born. Once there, Bumble put him to work picking oakhum with other unfortunate orphans in his care. Oliver and the boys worked with very little food and after six months, their hunger had become intolerable. They decided to draw lots and the loser would ask Bumble for more gruel. Oliver drew the loosing lottery and with trembling hands holding his bowl, he went forward and made his famous request:

 

“Please sir, I want some more.”

 

There was uproar, particularly among the board of governors who administered the workhouse. They saw this as the ultimate ingratitude and quickly decided to get rid of this “troublemaker” as quickly as possible. A sum of five pounds was offered to anyone who was prepared to take Oliver as an apprentice. A brutal chimney sweep almost claimed him but his protestation,

 

“Please don’t send me with that dreadful man” ?

 

was heard by the sympathetic Magistrate who refused to sign the indenture. Eventually, Mr. Sowerberry, an undertaker, took him into his service.

 

The Sowerberry business was located off the Attercliffe Road, close to its junction with Pinfold Lane and the adjoining township of Attercliffe cum Darnall. It was really two houses - the family lived in one house and the business was next door in the other. Mr. Sowerberry treat Oliver well and because of his angelic appearance - revealed once the dirt had been washed and scrapped off - he used him as a ‘ mute’ or mourner at children’s funerals.

 

Oliver’s arrival however, didn’t sit well with Mrs Sowerberry – because her husband seemed to liked the boy - or with Noah Claypole, the other apprentice. Claypole was a bully and not the brightest of individuals. He had ingratiated himself into the Sowerberry household and business and saw Oliver as a threat to his position. He went out of his way to cause trouble for Oliver and one day he insults the memory of Oliver’s late Mother by saying,

 

“Your mother was a regular right-down bad’un”.

 

In a fit of rage, Oliver attacks the much bigger boy and bettered him. He could only be subdued when Mrs. Sowerberry intervened. Oliver then received a thrashing, at Mrs. Sowerberry’s insistence, and that night he made up his mind to run away. The big question was where to go.

 

He had heard people talk about Manchester and even London, as good places but both sounded a long way away and he had no idea how to get there or in which direction to travel. Being born and raised in a workhouse, he had been a virtually prisoner and had little knowledge of the world beyond the high wall. He had never even been into Sheffield town and the journey from the workhouse to the undertakers had been the longest he had ever made. But Oliver was desperate to escape the clutches of Mrs. Sowerberry and Claypole so the following morning found him walking in the direction of Sheffield.

 

It was a cold crisp morning as Oliver set out along the Attercliffe Road, an area rapidly becoming industrialized. Once over George Blagden’s Washford Bridge however, and across the Salmon Pastures, his stomach was beginning to tell him he needed food. At the same time, a much older boy joined him and they walked on together. This boy introduced himself by saying,

 

“My name is Jack Dawkins - but other people know me as the Artful Dodger. And where might a young gentleman, such as yourself, be going?

 

“Dun’ know,” replied Oliver

 

Oliver hadn’t grasped the significance of the nick name but was grateful, once they reached the Wicker, when the Dodger offered to buy him a meal. The Dodger also offers to introduce him to an Old Gentleman who, in the Dodger’s own words,

 

“Will give you board and lodgings for nothing, and never ask for change.”

 

Naively, Oliver accepts the “kind” offer and follows the Dodger to the residence of the “Old Gentlemen”. In this way, Oliver unwittingly falls in with an infamous criminal known as Fagan. Ensnared, he lives with Fagan and his gang of young thieves at their lair on Spital Hill.

 

As most people know, Spital Hill is a shortened form of the originally name: Hospital Hill, site of St. Leonard Hospital of great antiquity. The hospital passed into history a long time ago but squatters have lived in its ruins and in other derelict properties on the hill, for generations since. The Wicker was hardly better. Londoner’s in Shakespeare’s day, seeking the more extreme pleasures of life, could find these by crossing the Thames to Southark: away from the watchful eyes of authority. So it has been in Sheffield. The taverns, ale houses and “other establishments”, along the Wicker and in its back streets, offered every possible form of entertainment. You only had to cross Lady’s Bridge to find it and you didn’t have the Burgery ( what passed for a civic authority in those days) looking over your shoulder. Of course many of the people who lived in the Wicker and on Spital Hill at that time had been “encouraged’ to leave the town by the Burgery themselves. The philosophy here was that with only Lady’s Bridge - and a wooden foot bridge at Bridgehouses - crossing the River Don close to the town, it would be easy to keep the thieves and foot pads at arm’s length in the Wicker and beyond.

 

A short time after his arrival at Spital Hill, Fagan tells Oliver,

 

“You have not brought in any ‘income’ and so must go and make handkerchiefs”.

 

Oliver has no idea what this means so innocently, he accompanies Dodger and a boy called Charlie Bates, in to Sheffield Town. They work their way up the Wicker, over Lady’s Bridge - under the suspicious gaze of town police - up Castle Green and into the town proper. So fascinated is Oliver with the sights, sounds and bustle of the town that he doesn’t realized until it is too late, that their real mission is to pick pockets. All though he doesn’t take part in the attempted robbery of an older gentleman, he is chased down and arrested, while Dodger and Bates make good their escape. He is quickly brought before a judge but a surprise witness, who saw the Dodger attempt the crime, clears him of any wrong doing. Oliver is seriously ill by this time actually faints in the courtroom. Mr. Brownlow, the older gentleman Oliver was alleged to be trying to rob, takes pity on him and has him brought to his home: one of the fine Georgian town houses that stand on Western Bank.

 

Once at the Brownlow house, he comes under the motherly care of Mrs. Bedwin, the housekeeper. He had never experienced such kindness and recovered rapidly; however, his bliss and happiness was soon brutally interrupted. Fagan is afraid that Oliver will inform on him and his gang so arranges to kidnap him once he is well enough to be allowed out of the house. When Mr. Brownlow sends Oliver to pay for some books, one of the gang, Nancy- albeit reluctantly – accosts him and with the help of her abusive lover, a brutal robber named Bill Sykes, soon has him back in Fagan’s lair. The thieves take the five pound note Mr. Brownlow has entrusted to him and strip him of his new clothes.

 

The treatment at the hands of the gang dismay him and he tries to escape and call for help but is ruthlessly dragged back by Dodger, Bates and Fagan. Nancy; however, is sympathetic towards Oliver and saves him from a beating from Fagan and Sykes.

 

In a renewed attempt to draw Oliver into a life of crime, Fagan forces him to take part in a burglary. Nancy reluctantly assists in recruiting him, all the while, promising to help him if she can. Sykes has planned the robbery on a house in Glossop Road. This will be at night for he is too well known to the police to try and enter Sheffield in daylight. Oliver is threatened with death, by Sykes, if he doesn’t cooperate and is pushed through a small window at the back of the house with instructions to open the front door. But in spite of all the planning, the robbery goes wrong and Oliver is shot. After being abandoned by Sykes and the rest of the gang, a wounded Oliver finds himself being nursed back to health by the very people he was supposed to rob: Rose Maylie and her Mother. Rose is convinced he is innocence and has been forced into participating in the robbery by the gang.

 

At the same time, a mysterious individual called Monks arrived at Fagan’s lair and is soon plotting with the old reprobate to destroy Oliver’s reputation, if not to take his life. Nancy, by this time ashamed of her role in the kidnapping and fearful for the boy’s safety, makes contact with Rose Maylie and Mr. Brownlow to warn them. Fagan meanwhile is in a high state of paranoia and has Nancy followed when she goes to meet Rose and Mr Brownlow on Lady’s Bridge. Fagan angrily passes this information onto Sykes, twisting the story sufficiently to leave Sykes with the impression that Nancy has informed on him (Not true). Believing her to be a traitor, Sykes murders Nancy in a fit of rage, and is himself killed when he accidentally hangs himself while fleeing over Wicker roof tops to avoid an angry mob.

 

The murder of Nancy galvanises the town authorities into action. The lair is raided by the police and the gang dispersed. Monks, the mystery man, is also found at the lair and Mr. Brownlow permitted to question him. Eventually he admits that he is Oliver’s paternal half brother and although he is legitimate, he was born of a loveless marriage. Agnes, Oliver’s mother, was their father’s true love. Monks has spent years looking for his father’s other child – not to befriend him, but to destroy him.

 

He also confirms that surname of Oliver’s mother Agnes, was Maylie. Therefore, Mrs Maylie is Oliver’s grandmother and Rose, his aunt. From these and other revelations that Monks deliverers, Mr. Brownlow realizes that Oliver’s father was an old friend. It also transpired that Oliver was now the beneficiary of a small legacy. At Mr. Brownlow’s suggestion, Oliver offers to share the money with Monks on the understanding he Monks leave Sheffield for good. Monks agrees and on receipt of his share, leaves for the United States, never to return.

 

As for Fagan, he was arrest in his lair, transported to York, tried, convicted and hung.

 

Oliver continued to live with Mr. Brownlow and began an intensive education program, to make up for all those lost years. He qualified as a lawyer and was called to the bar shortly before Mr Brownlow, his old benefactor, passes away. Oliver inherits the house at Western Bank and he and his descendants live there for many years.

 

 

Historical Note:

 

The terrace of Georgian houses stood proudly on Western Bank until the latter part of the 20th century. One by one, the houses had been acquired by the University of Sheffield and in approximately 1970, they were demolished to make way for new University buildings.

[mikomi]

Falls, You rose to the challenge and won, nice one .

[coyleys]

Falls, you are stickler for details, I commend you “Oh wise one” nicely wrote.

[Treatment]

Very succinctly put.