Oliver!

Resources

Glossary

Gruel

• Gruel was little more than a small amount of oatmeal boiled in a large amount of water. According to Hannah Glasse’s Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy (1747), gruel was made by boiling a spoonful of oatmeal in a pint of water three or four times, straining off the excess water and adding a piece of butter.[ i ]

Pease Pudding

• A meal that consisted of boiled and mashed peas. According to the official Manual of Workhouse Cookery (1901), ½ pound of split peas were to be boiled, strained and then mashed with a ¼ ounce of animal fat.[ii]

Saveloys

• A highly seasoned pork sausage – something that would not be part of Oliver’s workhouse diet.

Parish

• In nineteenth-century Britain, a parish was an administrative unit that oversaw a district or community which contained its own church, as well as a priest or pastor. The parish directly administered workhouses before the New Poor Laws were put into effect.[iii]

Parochial

• Related to the parish.

Beadle

• An employee of the parish, frequently associated with charitable duties.

Undertaker

• A person who prepares the deceased for burial.

Pauper

• A very poor person who receives private or public charity.

Cadge

• To try and obtain something without working or paying for it. People eating at a workhouse could be said to be looking to cadge a meal.

Magistrate

 

• Otherwise known as a “beak” to the Artful Dodger. Magistrates are essentially judges who administer law.

 

 

Online Resources:

•  http://www.mappalondon.com/london/north-west/map.htm
• http://www.mappalondon.com/london/north-east/stanfords-map.htm
• www.workhouse.org.uk

 

Films:

• Oliver Twist (1948) – David Lean
• Oliver Twist (2005) – Roman Polanski

 

Books:

• Peter Higginbotham, The Workhouse Cookbook (Stroud: The History Press, 2008)
• Lynda Nead, Victorian Babylon (London: Yale University Press, 2000)
• Frank Crompton, Workhouse Children (Stroud: Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1997)
• Judith Jennings, The Business of Abolishing the British Slave Trade, 1783-1807 (London: F. Cass, 1997)
• Derek Peterson, Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa and the Atlantic (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2010)
• M. A. Crowther, The Workhouse System 1834 – 1929 (London: Batsford Academic and Educational Ltd., 1981)