Oliver Twist: 12/24, Mr Claypole as he appeared when his master was out

'Mr Bumble tapped with his cane on the counter several times; but attracting no attention, and beholding a light shining through the glass window of the little parlour at the back of the shop, he made bold to peep in and see what was going forward; and when he saw what was going forward, he was not a little surprised. The cloth was laid for supper; the table was covered with bread and butter, plates and glasses; a porter-pot and a wine-bottle. At the upper end of the table Mr Noah Claypole lolled negligently in an easy chair, with his legs thrown over one of the arms; an open clasp knife in one hand, and a mass of buttered bread in the other. Close beside him stood Charlotte opening oysters from a barrel: which Mr Claypole condescended to swallow, with remarkable avidity. A more than ordinary redness in the region of the young gentleman’s nose, and a kind of fixed wink in his right eye, denoted that he was in a slight degree intoxicated.’

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.