In the final chapter of Oliver Twist, Dickens tells us what becomes of his characters in later life. Charley Bates, for instance, seeing what has befallen his criminal associates, resolves to mend his ways and, after toiling as a farmer’s drudge and a carrier’s lad, finds himself "the merriest young grazier in all Northamptonshire".
Others are not so lucky:
Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, deprived of their situations, were gradually reduced to great indigence and misery, and finally became paupers in that very same workhouse in which they had once lorded it over others. Mr. Bumble has been heard to say, that in this reverse and degradation, he has not even spirits to be thankful for being separated from his wife.
And the same thing, says the Brixworth History Society site, happened to one of the masters of Brixworth Workhouse:
Brixworth Workhouse had eight Masters during its 98 year history with all their wives acting as Matrons. One Master, a James Macdonald in the 1890s, was a man with exceptional physique who would deter tramps from entering the Workhouse by exercising outside with a set of Indian clubs. It was the same Master who adorned his lavish sitting room with autographed photographs of Queen Mary and her brothers.
Despite having taught deportment and physical exercise to royal pupils, when he left the Workhouse in 1898 he fell upon hard times himself and on returning to the Workhouse as an inmate, he died there a pauper.
I've also discovered that a study of the Brixworth Union – the collection of parishes that operated the workhouse – has been published. It's Protesting about Pauperism: Poverty, Politics and Poor Relief in Late-Victorian England, 1870-1900 by Elizabeth T. Hurren.
The more you find out, the more books there are to buy.
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