Please, sir, can I have a walk? Dickens biographer finds likely inspiration for Oliver Twist

Source: www.theguardian.com · Section: entertainment-sports · Bias: Center · Published: Fri, 09 Oct 2026 07:00:41 GMT

Exclusive: Theresa Musgrove unearths newspaper archives showing one Alice Shepherd was severely punished in 1836 for similarly innocent requestCould a consumptive young woman called Alice Shepherd have been the inspiration for Oliver Twist? That is a question now being posed by a historian, who has discovered parallels between the brutality suffered by a real-life pauper incarcerated in one of Victorian London’s notorious workhouses and Charles Dickens’s fictional orphan.In researching a new book on Dickens, Theresa Musgrove unearthed 1836 newspaper reports on Alice Shepherd, who endured starvation and solitary confinement within a workhouse in Hendon, after a magistrate ruled she was to be punished for daring to ask for permission to take a walk. Continue reading...

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