Charles Dickens' London: Oliver Twist

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Arthur H. Beavan continues his survey of London locations in Dickens' novels from Imperial London, 1901, with this look at Oliver Twist:

At the bottom of Great Saffron Hill there used to be a house near Field Lane, where the den of Fagin was situated.

Clerkenwell district sets one thinking of the court where Fang the magistrate sat, before whom Oliver was brought up on a false charge of picking the pocket of an old gentleman.

At Bethnal Green, "in a maze of dirty streets which abound in that close and densely-populated quarter," lodged Bill Sikes and Nancy.

"Near to that part of the Thames on which the church at Rotherhithe abuts, where the buildings on the banks are dirtiest," stood Jacob's Island, where Bill Sikes was run to earth after the murder of Nancy, unwittingly hanging himself with a rope he let down to escape by.

The Central Criminal Court recalls the trial and condemnation of Fagin, when "the Court was paved...with human faces. Inquisitive and eager eyes peered from every inch of space;" while Newgate brings to mind George Cruikshank's weird picture of Fagin in the condemned cell.

Next: Charles Dickens' London: Nicholas Nickleby