Charles Dickens's Novel Oliver Twist

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David Segal, The Charles Dickens Luxury Apartments. It once inspired Oliver Twist's workhouse. Now it embodies London's economic transformation. New York Times, Dec 26, 2021 (at page 1 of  SundayBusiness section)
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/ ... wist-workhouse.html

Note:
(a) This article is not the first news report to say that the workhouse was identified.

(b) " 'Oliver Twist,' the 1838 Charles Dickens novel * * * In 2010, the answer [about the identity of workhouse] suddenly seemed blazingly obvious.  That was the year a scholar, Ruth Richardson, connected two dots that had been eminently visible, and essentially ignored, for more than a century. The first was a home that [young] Dickens and his family had lived in. The second was the Strand Union Workhouse, built in the 1770s, about 100 yards down the same street. * * * The Strand Union Workhouse had a rule, for instance, expressly prohibiting second helpings of food, which may have given rise to the most famous sentence in the book: 'Please, sir, I want some more' — Oliver's spurned plea for another helping of gruel.  In 2011, the workhouse was 'listed,' giving it historic preservation status. * * * [Peter] Burroughs is director of development for the University College London Hospitals Charity, which pours money into health care. The organization owns the workhouse, and now that it can’t be torn down, he is in charge of turning it into 11 high-end apartments and two houses * * * this may be the most benighted condo conversion in the history of condo conversions * * * The property includes land that in the 18th and 19th centuries served as a pauper's graveyard. Last year, archaeologists started exhuming bodies, roughly 1,000 in all."
(i) Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
(A) Dickens first novel is "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club," also known as "The Pickwick Papers." (monthly serial, April 1836 to November 1837)  en.wikipedia.org for "Charles Dickens."
(B) His second novel is Oliver Twist. (monthly serial in Bentley's Miscellany, February 1837 to April 1839)  en.wikipedia.org for "Charles Dickens."

Dickens published "Oliver Twist" under the pseudonym "Boz."
(ii) Oliver Twist (character)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Twist_(character)
(section 1 Background: "Based in the 1820s, the orphan, young Oliver is born in a parish workhouse in an unnamed town. His unmarried mother dies during labour. Old Sally, who was present at the birth, takes [steals] from the dying woman a locket and ring. Mr Bumble [from the verb of the same spelling], the Beadle, names the boy Oliver Twist. Oliver is sent to an orphanage, run by Mrs Mann, until he is nine years old, when he is returned to the workhouse.  The orphans at the workhouse are starving * * * ")
(A) locket
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locket

In terms of etymology, locket is a diminutive of lock, the latter being from Old English loc.
(B) beadle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beadle
(C) The en.wikipedia.org has a separate page for the novel -- under the title "Oliver Twist."
(D) "The names of characters represent personal qualities. Oliver Twist himself is the most obvious example. The name “Twist,” though given by accident, alludes to the outrageous reversals of fortune that he will experience."  SparkNotes for "Symbols - Oliver Twist."
(iii) For Strand Union Workhouse, see Cleveland Street Workhouse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Street_Workhouse
("was built on an H plan on the eastern side of Cleveland Street between 1775 and 1778 * * * [Throughout its history, until the conversion to luxury apartments:] Even during the workhouse era the core function was to tend and care for the sick and infirm, since ill-health and infirmity was the main cause of pauperism. * * * When the building was used as the Strand Union Workhouse from 1836 [the names of the building changed over time; at one interval, the name was Strand Union Workhouse], it was the workhouse for the union of the parishes and places of St Mary le Strand")
(A) St Mary Le Strand Church. Visitlondon.com ("Official Visitor Guide" by Convention Bureau, City of London), undated
https://www.visitlondon.com/thin ... ry-le-strand-church

text in full:

"Walk along the Strand, by Aldwych, and you'll notice the traffic lanes split away from each other and a small [traffic] island [not an island on waters] appear in between. This is where you’ll find St Mary Le Strand Church. The second church of this name (the first used to be located where Somerset House now stands) was completed in 1717 and the building was consecrated in 1723.

"Designed by architect James Gibbs, the Baroque-style church near Covent Garden is small but beautiful. High windows help keep the traffic noise to a minimum indoors, and the impressive ceiling design alone is worth a quick visit. Since 1982, this has also been the official church of the Women’s Royal Naval Service (nicknamed The Wrens).

This church belongs to Church of England, in City of Westminster.
Strand, London
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strand,_London
("a major thoroughfare in the City of Westminster * * * The road's name comes from the Old English strond, meaning the edge of a river, as it historically ran alongside the north bank of the River Thames. The street was much identified with the British upper classes between the 12th and 17th centuries, with many historically important mansions being built between the Strand and the river. These included Essex House, Arundel House, Somerset House, Savoy Palace, Durham House and Cecil House. The aristocracy moved to the West End during the 17th century, and the Strand became known for its coffee shops, restaurants and taverns. The street was a centre point for theatre and music hall during the 19th century, and several venues remain on the Strand. At the east end of the street are two historic churches: St Mary le Strand and St Clement Danes. This easternmost stretch of the Strand is also home to King's College, one of the two founding colleges of the University of London [see (c)(i) below]. In addition to the current Somerset House, other important structures include the Royal Courts of Justice")

The Strand runs parallel to River Thames.
• The Modern English noun
strand (origin: "Late 15th century of unknown origin")
https://www.lexico.com/definition/strand
• City of Westminster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Westminster
("in inner London [which contains City of London, City of Westminster (the only two cities) and boroughs]")
has its own lord mayor (before 1965, the title [in Westminster] was simply mayor).  The lord mayor is elected annually by Westminster City Council among themselves (that is, City Council picks one among its members) to take on ceremonial role of lord mayor, such as presiding over City Council – sounding more like president of a city council in an American city.

Notice in the map that City of Westminster (red) is on the western border of City of London/

Compare
City of London  (Note: In this use, the first letter of City is  always capitalized)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London
("The City of London is widely referred to simply as the City * * * and is also colloquially known as the Square Mile, as it is 1.12 sq mi (2.90 km2) in area. * * * [section 2 Governance:] It [City of London] is administered by the City of London Corporation, headed by the Lord Mayor of London (not to be confused with the separate Mayor of London, an office created only in the year 2000)" )
with
London
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London  
("Until 1889, the name 'London' applied officially only to the City of London, but since then it has also referred to * * *  Greater London [which is this Wiki page is about, judging by its mayor Sadiq Khan")
• Mayors and Lord Mayors. Birmingham City Council, undated
https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/in ... lord_mayor_s_office
("Birmingham has had a Mayor (and elected council) since 1838. * * * In 1889 Birmingham achieved its city status.  The right to appoint a Lord Mayor is a relatively rare honour that is even less frequently bestowed than city status. Only 23 cities in England have Lord Mayors: Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Canterbury, Chester, Coventry, Exeter, Kingston-upon-Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, the City of London, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Stoke-on-Trent, the City of Westminster, and York. The title of Lord Mayor [in Birmingham] was granted on 3 June 1896, the first Lord Mayor of Birmingham was Sir James Smith.  Since the Local Government Act 1972 (section 3.1), the Lord Mayor must be a member of the City Council. Previously, under the Local Government Act 1933, the Lord Mayor could be elected from 'those qualified' - which roughly equated to all those entitled to vote in the area")
• Greater London also has its mayor (but not lord mayor) (directly elected, with a fixed term of four years); now prime minister, Boris Johnson, was mayor of (Greater) London 2008-2016.
(B) A church has its surrounding area as its parish. See St Mary le Strand (parish)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary_le_Strand_(parish)
("St Mary le Strand was an ancient parish * * * The church was demolished in 1548 during the construction of Somerset House [by and for Duke of Somerset] and not rebuilt until 1723" in another location in City of Westminster)
(C) Why the word union?
• poor law union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_law_union
("A poor law union was a geographical territory * * * Poor law unions existed in England and Wales from 1834 to 1930 for the administration of poor relief. Prior to the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 the administration of the English Poor Laws was the responsibility of the vestries of individual parishes * * * From 1834 the parishes were grouped into unions, jointly responsible for the administration of poor relief in their areas and each governed by a board of guardians. A parish large enough to operate independently of a union was known as a poor law parish. Collectively, poor law unions and poor law parishes were known as poor law districts. The grouping of the parishes into unions caused larger centralised workhouses to be built to replace smaller facilities in each parish")
• Peter Higginbotham, Strand, Middlesex, London. Workhouses.org.uk, undated
https://www.workhouses.org.uk/Strand/
("Between 1771 and 1837, when it joined the Strand Union, St Anne's had a workhouse on Rose Street, now 14 Manette Street")

Then view the first and second maps on this Web page. The first is Cleveland Street in 1827 and the second, same street in 1770. The former showed a H-shaped (blackened) Strand Union Workhouse, and the second showed the same workhouse with surrounding buildings, each of which is labeled "infirm wards."
• St Anne's Church, Soho
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Anne%27s_Church,_Soho


(c)
(i) History of the University of London. University of London, undated.
https://london.ac.uk/about-us/history-university-london

two paragraphs:

"Established as a secular alternative to Oxford and Cambridge, the only two other English universities at the time, we became the first to explicitly exclude religious qualification as an entry requirement. In 1858, Charles Dickens' magazine, All the Year Round [name of the magazine], coined the term 'The People's University,' which would 'extend her hand even to the young shoemaker who studies in his garret.'

"The University [hence its constituent college: University College London] was established by royal charter in 1836, as a degree-awarding examination board for students holding certificates from University College London and King's College London.

• garret
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garret  
("a habitable attic * * * traditionally, small, dismal, and cramped, with sloping ceilings. In the days before elevators this was the least prestigious position in a building, at the very top of the stair")
(A) "University College London (UCL) was founded under the name 'London University' (but without recognition by the state) in 1826 as a secular alternative to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which limited their degrees to members of the established Church of England. * * * King's College London was founded * * * by royal charter in 1829."  en.wikipedia.org for "University of London."
(B) Oliver E Hadingham, Oxbridge and the Nurturing of An 'Urban Gentry' - The Reform of Oxford and Cambridge in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. The Asian Conference on Education 2016
https://papers.iafor.org/wp-cont ... 6/ACE2016_32863.pdf
("Oxford and Cambridge upheld the established order. The protestant Church of England remained the national church since the Act of Uniformity of 1662, and was allied to what most felt to be a Anglican state. Around two-thirds of Oxbridge graduates during the eighteenth century became Anglican clergymen. * * * The University of London [actually 'London University'] (1828) renamed University College London in 1836, imposed no religious tests on its students and was not residential. The Church of England vilified it as the 'godless institution of Gower Street [along whihch UCL is located]' * * * The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 [the repeal made nonconformists (non-Anglicans) eligible for government employment] * * * In 1852 Royal Commissions examined the state of the two old universities. * * * The Commissions led to Acts of Parliament for Oxford in 1854 and Cambridge in 1856. These Acts allowed non-conformists to enroll on degree courses - but not ones in theology - by abolishing the need to sign the Thirty-Nine Articles. Oxford freshman had to affirm their belief in the Anglican creed by signing this document outlining the doctrine of the Church of England. Oxford and Cambridge fellows, too, were expected to be ordained soon after taking up their appointment, and were also to remain celibate. The Acts of the 1850s did away with an important impediment to widening access to old universities and with it, rejuvenating an elite so that it was more in tune with the changing times")

clerical celibacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerical_celibacy
(section 5 Rules for Christian clergy: Churches of the Anglican Communion have no restrictions on the marriage of deacons, priests, bishops, or other ministers to a person of the opposite sex [but not same sex]. Early Anglican Church clergy under Henry VIII were required to be celibate (see Six Articles), but the requirement was eliminated by Edward VI [reign 1547-1553; predecessor was his father Henry VIII]. Some Anglo-Catholic priestly orders require their members to remain celibate, as do monastic orders of all brothers and sisters")
(C) University of Oxford started accepting women for degrees in some colleges, starting 1920.
(D) The Rising Ride: Women in Cambridge. University of Cambridge, undated
https://www.cam.ac.uk/TheRisingTide
("Cambridge University did not grant degrees to women until the late 1940s, the last British university to do so. * * * 1948[:] The first female recipient of a Cambridge degree was the Queen Mother, who received an honorary degree"_

Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth_The_Queen_Mother   
(1900-2002; wife of King George VI; :After her husband died [ in 1952] , she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother,[2] to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II")
(ii) Both University College London and King's College London have their own medical schools and hospitals.


(d) About the word Cleveland.
(i) The English surname Cleveland is "regional name from the district around Middlesbrough named Cleveland 'the land of the cliffs,' from the genitive plural (clifa) of Old English clif 'bank,' 'slope' + land 'land.' "  Dictionary of American Family Names, by Oxford Univ Press.

genitive = possessive
(ii) Cleveland, Yorkshire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland,_Yorkshire
("is a land of hills and dales from the River Tees to Vale of Pickering, England. The area's name means 'cliff-land.' * * * [Cleveland is] effectively the eastern half of Yorkshire's North Riding")

There is no need to read the rest. But do view the maps. In Map 2, at 9 to 10 o'clocks is "Cleveland Basin" in brown written horizontally in two lines, which is bounded in the southeastern direction by an arc of brown "Cleveland Hills."  
(ii) Middlesbrough
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlesbrough  
("is a large town in North Yorkshire, England. It is on the River Tees's southern bank")


(e) Ruth Richardson the historian
(i) Dr Ruth Richardson, Charles Dickens and the Cleveland Street Workhouse. The Charles Dickens Page, February 2011
https://www.charlesdickenspage.c ... reet-workhouse.html
("I'm a historian of medicine, mostly. * * * I suspected that when he was in the blacking factory, young Dickens might have been inside the catchment area for the workhouse * * * and that he might therefore have been working alongside children who had been apprenticed out from Cleveland Street")
(A) English dictionary:
* black (vt): "to put a black substance on something or to make something black  <The soldiers used to black their faces>"
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/blacking
* catchment (n): "the action of collecting water, especially the collection of rainfall over a natural drainage area"
   ^ A "catchment area" in British English
   https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/catchment_area
   is the same as drainage or watershed in American English.
(B) Before you read this, read next first.
(ii) Editors, Cambridge Historian and Oxford publisher Under Scrutiny over Claim Made in Dickens Book. Fitzrovia News, Mar 6, 2012 (updated Dec 13, 2014)
https://fitzrovianews.com/2012/0 ... utiny-dickens-book/
("A book about Charles Dickens' life in Cleveland Street written by a Cambridge historian and published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in February has been criticised after it failed to acknowledge previously published works. * * * In Chapter 1 of her book Dr Richardson describes how she used existing biographical details which stated that Dickens lived at 10 Norfolk Street. She then compared old maps with newer ones and found that Norfolk Street had been re-named and was now Cleveland Street. 10 Norfolk Street is the same building as today's 22 Cleveland Street. * * * In 1930 E Beresford Chancellor wrote a book called London's Old Latin Quarter and in it he states that Charles Dickens lived twice at 22 Cleveland Street and that the former Strand Union Workhouse is in the same street (see pages 181 to 186)" )
(A) book: Ruth Richardson, Dickens and the Workhouse; Oliver Twist & the London poor. OUP, 2012.
(B) It is possible that Dr Richardson was unaware of previous identification of "10 Norfolk Street" as on what is now Cleveland Street -- much like Austrian monk Gregor Mendel's study on peas was forgotten and rediscovered.
(C) So, Dr Richardson's contribution is to connect two dots (the workhouse and Dickens's onetime home were both on Cleveland Street) and that many personalities in that street bestowed their surnames to the novel.
(iii) "Dr [Ruth] Richardson is a Scholar in the History of Science at the University of Cambridge, and Senior Research Fellow in History at the University of Hertfordshire at Hatfield. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society * * * "  from the Web.