Oliver Twist: 4/24, Oliver introduced to the respectable old gentleman

The walls and ceiling of the room were perfectly black with age and dirt. There was a deal table before the fire; upon which was a candle, stuck in a gingerbeer bottle, two or three pewter pots, a loaf and butter and a plate. In a frying pan which was on the fire, and which was secured to the mantelshelf by a string, some sausages were cooking: and standing over them with a toasting –fork in his hand was a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villaneous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair. He was dressed in a greasy flannel gown, with his throat bare; and seemed to be dividing his attention between the frying-pan and a clothes-horse over which a great number of silk handkerchiefs were hanging……Seated around the table were four or five boys, none older than the Dodger, smoking long clay pipes, and drinking spirits with the air of middle-aged men…’ This is him, Fagin,’said Jack Dawkins; ‘my friend Oliver Twist’.

George Cruikshank supplied twenty-four engravings for the first edition of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens between February 1837 and April 1839. It was Dickens’s second novel published by Richard Bentley. After Dickens's death in 1870, Cruikshank made the claim that it was he who had originated Oliver Twist, a claim which Dickens's biographer and confidant, John Forster, refuted by referring to Dickens's letters. The plates for that novel certainly reflect Cruikshank's extensive knowledge of the London underworld.