Workhouses were nineteenth-century institutions that provided food, lodging, and employment for the poor. However, they were excellent examples of the moral hypocrisy of the upper and middle classes. The officials governing such workhouses considered themselves to be morally upright and superior to the poor inmates. They forced the inmates to work long hours on a meager diet in order to build their character. Yet the officials themselves were well-fed and rarely did any strenuous work themselves.
Setting the novel in a workhouse also allowed Dickens to reveal the widespread suffering and oppression of the poor during his lifetime. Besides being poorly fed, the residents of such workhouses were often subjected to harsh laws. These laws included forcefully separating poor married couples in order to reduce the overall population of the poor. By introducing Oliver in a workhouse, Dickens makes upper- and middle-class readers of his time aware of the poor class's plight. In doing so, he negates the commonly held belief that the poor were happy in the workhouses. The author hints at this belief with the following satirical remark:
The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out at once, what ordinary folks would never have discovered—the poor people liked it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round; a brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work.
Dickens emphasizes the inadequacy of the care provided by the workhouse by giving an example of a child who threatens his fellow inmates with eating his neighbor:
Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months: at last they got so voracious and wild with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his age, and hadn't been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small cook-shop), hinted darkly to his companions, that unless he had another basin of gruel per diem, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next him, who happened to be a weakly youth of tender age.
When Oliver asks for more food, it creates a scandal among the board members. They sharply rebuke the boy and subject him to severe punishment rather than notice his poor health. This incident also highlights the lack of morals among the people running such institutions and among the upper and working classes of Dickens’s era.
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