Oliver Twist: 8/24, Oliver's reception by Fagin and the boys

'Charles Bates snatched the cleft stick from the Dodger; and advancing to Oliver viewed him round and round; while the Jew, taking off his nightcap, made a great number of low bows to the bewildered boy. The Artful Dodger, meanwhile, who was of a rather saturnine disposition and seldom gave way to merriment when it interfered with business, rifled Oliver’s pockets with a steady assiduity. ‘Look at his togs, Fagin!,' said Charley, putting the light so close to his new jacket as nearly to set him on fire. ’Look at his togs! Superfine cloth, and the heavy swell cut!' 'Delighted to see you looking so well, my dear’, said the Jew, bowing with mock humility.'

George Cruikshank supplied twenty-four engravings for the first edition of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens between February 1837 and April 1839. It was Dickens’s second novel published by Richard Bentley. After Dickens's death in 1870, Cruikshank made the claim that it was he who had originated Oliver Twist, a claim which Dickens's biographer and confidant, John Forster, refuted by referring to Dickens's letters. The plates for that novel certainly reflect Cruikshank's extensive knowledge of the London underworld.