Despised by All and Pitied by None: Victorian Childhood in Oliver

Twist
Kat Martin Diving Deeper
“For the rest of his life, Oliver Twist remembers a single word of
blessing spoken to him by another child because this word stood out
so strikingly from the consistent discouragement around him.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

“In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever
brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt,
as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be
exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its
rocking-horse stands as many hands high . . .”
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Childhood. Just typing that word makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
However, the idea of a “childhood” is a relatively modern concept.
These days childhood is often thought of as a sacred time where
people experience true innocence and unmitigated naivety. For me
when I close my eyes and travel back to my childhood, I have flashes
of uncontrollable giggling, running around freely at my grandma’s,
spinning around in circles until we “all fall down,” and the most
magical Christmas EVER when I got an Nintendo 64 from Santa.

For some like me, it’s a golden, glittering, warm time that we can go
back to in our memories. For others childhood is a; grim, gray,
cacophonous beginning, a time to be barred away and forgotten. In
both cases, this time shapes us into who we are and how we enter
into the world of adulthood. Not being adults gave us all a chance
where we weren’t in charge, where we didn’t make decisions for
ourselves, either freeing us to play or chaining us to deal with
decisions thrust upon us. Children of the Victorian period, however,
were simply adults in smaller packaging. Especially for children of
lower classes, children were small adults who needed to pull their
own weight so their family could avoid the curse of a workhouse or
debtors prison. Because there were no laws that protected children
at that time, their lives as workers or on the street was incredibly
cut-throat, dangerous, and, for lack of a better word, adult.

A lower class family in the Victorian period in their home. Look at the
boy looking straight into the camera; that is not the face of a
carefree child.
A lower class family in the Victorian period in their home. Look at the
boy looking straight into the camera; that is not the face of a
carefree child.

In Dickensian England, a childhood as we envision it was only within

the reach of the wealthy. In rich homes, children were raised by
nannies or nurses and expected to follow a strict standard of
behavior. For lower class families, children were breadwinners that
brought home meager wages from factories, coal mines, or other
people's pockets. Kids went to work just like everyone else in the
same conditions that are enough to turn our contemporary
stomachs. There were few laws protecting them from working
alongside their parents in the mills. Before the Factory Acts of 1847,
which stipulated that children under the age of nine could not work
in the textile mills, children as young as four were employed to
perform a simple task, and often, spent most of their unemployed
infancies in the deafening, dirty factories. E.P. Thompson notes in
The Making of the English Middle Class,

“...Mothers, for fear of losing their employment, returned to the mill

three weeks or less after the birth: still, in some Lancashire and West
Riding towns, infants were carried in the 1840s to the mills to be
suckled in the meal-break. Girl-mothers, who had perhaps worked in
the mill from the age of eight or nine, had no domestic training:
medical ignorance was appalling: the parents were a prey to fatalistic
superstitions (which the churches sometimes encouraged): opiates,
notably laudanum, were used to make the crying baby quiet. Infants
and toddlers were left in the care of relatives, old baby-farming
crones, or children too small to find work at the mill. Some were
given dirty rag-dummies to suck, in which is tied a piece of bread
soaked in milk and water, and toddlers of two and three could be
seen running about with these rags in their mouths, in the
neighborhood of factories.”
1. AN ALCOHOLIC SOLUTION CONTAINING MORPHINE, PREPARED
FROM OPIUM AND FORMERLY USED AS A NARCOTIC PAINKILLER.
There were many studies commissioned by the British government
and activists of the time that pulled back the curtain and showed the
truths of these factories. In 1842, 5 years after Dickens began to
release Oliver Twist, The Condition and Treatment of the Children
Employed in the Mines and Colliers of the United Kingdom was
released that showed the daily and routine mistreatment of children
that shocked many upper class Englishmen and women even though
it had been a reality for those living in the lower classes for years.

Children from families like the one above hard at work in Victorian
factories.Their work was unsafe and unregulated. To take a closer
look into the world of a child laborer, explore the 1842 report
yourself.
Children from families like the one above hard at work in Victorian
factories.Their work was unsafe and unregulated. To take a closer
look into the world of a child laborer, explore the 1842 report
yourself.

Children like The Artful Dodger and Charley Bates in Charles Dickens’
Oliver Twist took to the streets to avoid the torture of “respectable”
employment. In his book, Orphan Texts: Victorian Orphans, Culture
and Empire, Hugh Cunningham notes, “indeed, an estimated 60% of
the criminal population were orphans, at one point or another. They
indulged in thievery or became prostitutes to survive. The more
honest orphans who lived on the streets often banded together for
survival, doing menial tasks for the upper class, or begging for
money.”
Children from the Victorian period often lived on the streets or as
Nancy tells Fagin in Oliver Twist, “I theived for you when I was a child
not half as old as [Oliver]! I have been in the same trade for twelve
years since...It is my living and the …
Children from the Victorian period often lived on the streets or as
Nancy tells Fagin in Oliver Twist, “I theived for you when I was a child
not half as old as [Oliver]! I have been in the same trade for twelve
years since...It is my living and the cold, wet dirty streets are my
home.”

In Twist we get a peek into the inner workings of a band of child

thieves and pickpockets who are led and cared for by Fagin.

When Oliver meets The Artful Dodger, the contrast between the two
boys is very stark. Although Oliver has been walking for seven days
from the countryside to London and is, “very tired and hungry,” he
still has a glow radiating from the inside of him. An innocence and a,
dare I say it, childlike quality that beams against the soot of London
and the dankness of Fagin’s lair. Oliver is an innocent, a beacon, a
true child, who draws attention from those who would seek to
corrupt him. The Artful Dodger, on the other hand, is more of an
adult than most of my friends in their 20s. According to Dickens,

“he was a snub-nosed, flat-browed, common-faced boy enough; and

as dirty a juvenile as one would wish to see; but he had about him all
the airs and manners of a man. He was short of his age: with rather
bow-legs, and little, sharp, ugly eyes. His hat was stuck on the top of
his head so lightly, that it threatened to fall off every moment--and
would have done so, very often, if the wearer had not had a knack of
every now and then giving his head a sudden twitch, which brought
it back to its old place again. He wore a man's coat, which reached
nearly to his heels. He had turned the cuffs back, half-way up his
arm, to get his hands out of the sleeves: apparently with the ultimate
view of thrusting them into the pockets of his corduroy trousers; for
there he kept them. He was, altogether, as roystering and
swaggering a young gentleman as ever stood four feet six, or
something less, in the bluchers.”

This miniature adult leads Oliver into the underbelly of London or as

director and adapter Patrick Mullins, puts it, “The Artful Dodger is
Oliver's concierge into the world of the underground.” As Dodger
takes Oliver deeper and deeper we can’t help but root for Oliver’s
childhood. We hope that Oliver remains incorruptible against all
odds. The preservation of childhood is such a human impulse that we
all feel compelled to wrap our arms around the small child and keep
him safe.
A group of child chimney sweeps taking a break from their workday
during the middle Victorian period. These kids can’t be much older
than 10, but their hardened expressions challenge the photographer
to call them tikes or pat them on the head.
A group of child chimney sweeps taking a break from their workday
during the middle Victorian period. These kids can’t be much older
than 10, but their hardened expressions challenge the photographer
to call them tikes or pat them on the head.

The importance of childhood is something we feel in our gut. It leads

us to save pictures and toys in special boxes tucked under our bed or
in the back of the closet. It’s why you can’t help but giggle while you
run across the street while cars rush by. But for children of Oliver’s
time, it was nonexistent or simply a shade of adulthood. The childlike
naivety of Oliver makes him standout. Every character that
encounters him in London sees something special in the boy that
makes him the spark of youth in the grey factory of adulthood. That
is why Nancy is willing to risk it all to deliver him out of the gutter
and to Mrs. Brownlow and a home that will truly let him be a child
and grow. While Nancy walks to meet with Mrs.Brownlow on London
Bridge, we hear a haunting melody from composer and musical
director Jake Hull:

“Oh I’d live for you

Turn your fate around
Give my whole fortune or burn this whole place down
Just to see you run
Far away from this
But I have nothing, no
Just my life to give.”

These lyrics reflect just how deeply we covet childhood as a precious,

protected time. And a time that all children, regardless of what they
are born into, deserve to have.

WORKS CITED
Dickens, Charles, Scott McKowen, and Arthur Pober. Oliver Twist or a
Parish Boy's Progress. New York: Sterling, 2008. Print.

Peters, Laura, and Hugh Cunningham. Orphan Texts: Victorian

Orphans, Culture and Empire. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000.
Print.

"Report on Child Labour, 1842." The British Library. The British

Library, 06 Feb. 2014. Web. 19 Oct. 2016.
Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. New York:
Pantheon, 1964. Print.