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Oliver Twist
Excerpt by Charles Dickens
Poor Oliver! He little thought, as he lay sleeping in happy unconsciousness of all around him, that
the board had that very day arrived at a decision which would exercise the most material
influence over all his future forfunes. But they had. And this was it. The members of this board
were very sage, deep, philosophical men: and when they came to turn their attention to the
workhouse, they found out at once, what ordinary folks would never have discovered-the poor
people liked it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes: a tavern
where there was nothing to pay, a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round a
brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work. Ohol said the board, looking very
knowing: we are the fellows to set this to rights, we's stop it all, in no time. So, they established
the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative for they would compel nobody, not
they), of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it. With this
view, they contracted with the water-works to lay on an unlimited supply of water, and with a
com-factor to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeat and issued three meals of thin gruel
a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll of Sundays. They made a great many other
wise and humane regulations, having reference to the ladies, which it is not necessary to repeat:
kindly undertook to divorce poor married people, in consequence of the great expense of a suit
in Doctors' Commons: and, instead of compelling a man to support his family, as they had
Theretofore done took his family away from him and made him-o-bachelorThere is no saying
how many applicants for relief, under these last two heads might have started up in all classes of
society. If it had not been coupled with the workhouse; but the board were long-headed men,
and had provided for this difficulty. The relief was inseparable from the workhouse and the gruet
and that frightened people.
35 The excerpt is important to the development of the plot because it-
signifies the point at which Olliver's life changes
8 presents the community's opinion on poverty
Cexplains how the workhouse changed
provides a solution to the problems of the poor