Dickens' Oliver Twist

[thonglor55]

The Forum's resident Charles Dickens' scholar, combat, hasn't yet drawn Forum members' attention to this story so, reluctantly, I must step in. The building that may have served as Dickens' model for the workhouse where Oliver Twist asked for more is to be preserved from demolition. The derelict Georgian building in Cleveland Street, London, which in Dickens' day was known as the Strand Union workhouse, has been given listed status by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. Oliver Twist famously became a member of a 19th Century go-go boy bar known as Fagins'.

The decision, on the advice of English Heritage, came on the grounds of its literary and historic associations rather than architectural merit, to prevent its being demolished and replaced by an apartment block. The workhouse тАУ one of three such buildings surviving in London, but the only one still in operation in the 1830s when Dickens was writing his novel тАУ has been identified as his possible model. The author lived 100 yards away on the same street as a teenager.

The full story can be found at The Guardian.

...Oliver Twist famously became a member of a 19th Century go-go boy bar known as Fagins'...

You are absolutely correct, Thonglor55.

It's been hushed up for years that Dickens was actually writing about underground prostitution of young boychicks - all the pickpocketing malarkey in Oliver Twist was only a symbol for what he REALLY meant!

Consider the name of the jewish mamasan - Fagin - for example.

Fagin/Faygala - a coincidence? I think not!!

MAZEL TOV

:occasion9:

"The problem of prostitutionтАФor тАЬfallen womenтАЭтАФalso highlights the ambiguous line between child and adult during the Victorian period as well as the instability of the Victorian тАЬangel of the houseтАЭтАФthe pe-riodтАЩs model woman, who is selflessly devoted to her children and husband. According to Ackroyd, the number of prostitutes in midcentury
London was anywhere from 10,000 to 120,000 (Dickens 588), and a great number of them were what would now be considered grossly underage. According to Kincaid, streetwalkers were as young as eight or nine years of age. Quite often, these girls were born and raised in neighborhoods in which brothels were simply part of the landscape,
and the sex industry presented itself to them as a viable means of income for supporting themselves and their families. While the youth of these women did not greatly concern the Victorians until late in the century, according to Kincaid, Victorians did recognize prostitution as a problem."

"Dickens may not have allowed his fallen women to escape censure despite depicting them as characters worthy of our sympathy. Peter Ackroyd, Dickens most recent biographer tells us, 'Dickens sympathised most readily with prostitutes. He is reported to have said that, "he was sure God looked leniently on all vice that proceeded from human tenderness and natural passion"' (Ackroyd, p. 537). It seems then that Dickens suppressed his sympathies a little when dealing with the fallen women in his novels and that it was in a more practical, pragmatic way that he exercised this sympathy тАФ towards the inhabitants of Urania Cottage."

"Dickens' involvement with Urania Cottage ended in 1858, his friendship with Miss Coutts having cooled after his acrimonious separation that year from his wife, following his affair with a pretty 19-year-old actress, Nelly Ternan. With his private life in disarray and subject to gossip, perhaps Dickens felt he was on shaky ground rescuing fallen women."

John Leech, Punch 1857. http://www.victorianweb.org/periodicals/punch/49.jpg "Although predating Hardy's "The Ruined Maid" by some nine years, the cartoon admirably illustrates the poem's satiric dialogue. Note that, as the cartoon makes clear, in the Victorian period, "gay" referred to prostitution and not homosexuality."