Degenerate ‘Innocents’: Childhood, Deviance, and Criminality in Nineteenth-Century Texts

Abstract

Charles Dickens’s depiction of Fagin’s boys in his 1837–38 tale Oliver Twist, or, The Parish Boy’s Progress is perhaps literature’s most enduring representation of the criminal child gang. Moreover, it still resonates in contemporary discourse; in January 2008, The Scotsman reported that police had ‘smashed’ a modern-day ‘Fagin’s Gang’ that had allegedly forced young children into a life of crime (Chris Greenwood n.p.). In both Dickens’s text and The Scotsman’s editorial, the young are presented as seemingly at the mercy of manipulative villains: the children in the news item were apparently sent onto the streets to beg and steal by older crooks, while the anti-Semitic and evocative description of Fagin as ‘shrivelled,’ ‘villanous-looking,’ and ‘repulsive’ hints at his corruptive influence, a perception later validated by Nancy when she denounces Fagin as ‘“the wretch that drove me to ... [the cold, wet, dirty streets] long ago”’ (Oliver Twist 133). Standing in the blackened room, toasting fork in hand, Fagin might be the devil incarnate; as he fries sausages, he is metaphorically preparing his youthful flock for an eternal roasting in the flames of hell. The narrative, however, would seem to suggest that Fagin’s boys are not merely innocent creatures coerced into crime by an older, deviant mentor. The Dodger and his cronies are apparently 10 or 11 years old, the same age as Oliver, but enthusiastically drink spirits and smoke clay pipes ‘with the air of middle-aged men’ (64).

In a frying-pan which was on the fire, and which was secured to the mantel-shelf 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 villanous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair. … [S]eated round 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. These all crowded about their associate as he whispered a few words to the Jew, and then turned round and grinned at Oliver, as did the Jew himself, toasting-fork in hand. (Oliver Twist 64)