Please, sir, can I have a walk? Dickens biographer finds likely inspiration for Oliver Twist
What happened
Exclusive: Theresa Musgrove unearths newspaper archives showing one Alice Shepherd was severely punished in 1836 for similarly innocent request Could 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 no…
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