The Anglican Church, from its official inception in the early 16^th century, had been an active political force, especially in the administration of poverty relief. For centuries, almsgiving was considered a religious and social duty, and Christians were urged to “not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your poor brother; but you shall ... generously lend him sufficient for his needs in whatever he lacks.” (Exodus 15:7-8).¹ However, the winds of change began to brew in the 18th century, when the Industrial Revolution created more socioeconomic mobility, and increasingly people began to view poverty as a condition resulting from personal failure rather than an inescapable state. Some church leaders condemned almsgiving as counter-productive or immoral. As such anti-relief ideology circulated and discontent over taxation flared, Parliament passed the 1834 Poor Law Reform Act, which terminated relief to able-bodied people and their families, decreased the attractiveness of workhouses, and stripped workhouse laborers of their wages. For Christians who supposedly treated others with fairness, kindness, and altruism, parish administrators sacrificed their duty of providing the basic necessities of life to constantly seeking the least expensive relief method. As for young Twist, “Oliver cried lustily. If he had known that he was left to the tender mercies of churchwardens ..., perhaps he would have cried the louder.” (3)² Thus, Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist is an expos� of the masked and scheming hypocrisy of the Anglican Church in the 1800s.

The conduct of Mr. Bumble and the workhouse directors ignore the biblical injunction, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13), which is repeatedly emphasized in the New Testament, e.g., Matthew 5:21, Romans 1:28-29. The board is “very much amused” at the dangerous chimney-sweep profession, at the “young boys smothered in chimneys ... before”, and Gamfield's grim depiction of boys “roasting their feet” in a “struggle to hextricate theirselves [sic]” (16). Because the parish does not wish to bloody its hands with another’s blood, they attempt to achieve their goal indirectly through a cruel and cold-hearted master such as Gamfield. The workhouse authorities agree to indenture Oliver to Gamfield at the price of “three pound, ten” shillings (18), but the plan fails at the last minute and the board magnanimously starts considering sending Oliver “in some small trading vessel bound to a good unhealthy port” where “the skipper would flog him to death ... or would knock his brains out with an iron bar ...” (24). Mr. Bayton, another victim of this hypocrisy, “swears ... before the God that saw it” of the inhumanity of the socio-religious system over the body of his dead wife, “for they starved her to death” (37).

Footnotes
1       All Bible quotations are extracted from New American Standard Bible, Foundation Publications, Anaheim, California: © 1997.
2       All quotations from Oliver Twist are specifically from Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, Bantam Books, New York: © 1981.

       

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