Please, sir, I want some more

摘要

The plaintive words of the unfortunate boy chosen to plead for his fellow inmates still resonate. They speak of chronic want, injustice, and neglect. But how true are the sentiments underpinning this powerful popular work? A dietetic analysis of Oliver Twist's workhouse diet, as well as contemporaneous workhouse menus, allows us to answer the question-did Oliver really need more? In the past few decades,, historians have described workhouses as "pauper palaces." Yet others have highlighted the barbarous injustices perpetrated on inmates, most notably at Andover workhouse, where paupers were reduced to gnawing rotten bones. Terrifying rumours of floggings, starvation, and the separation of families circulated in contemporary society. Dickens was mainly responsible for the dim view of the Victorian workhouse-the Andover guardians were condemned by a select committee nine years after the publication of Oliver Twist, or, the Parish Boy's Progress (1837-8).