Inside Fagin’s or Bill Sikes’s Home — Oundle School 11+ (2024)

Writing task

In the passage from Oliver Twist, Fagin leaves his home and arrives at Bill Sikes’s home. Neither house is described. Choose one of the two homes and describe it in a way that fits the passage.

Source passage

Read this extract adapted from Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist set in London in 1837, and answer the questions which follow. In this extract a character called Fagin leaves his house to visit a man called Bill Sykes.

It was a chill, damp, windy night, when Fagin, buttoning his great-coat tight round his shrivelled body, and pulling the collar up over his ears so as completely to obscure the lower part of his face, emerged from his house. He paused on the step as the door was locked and chained behind him and slunk down the street as quickly as he could.

The house to which he headed was in the neighborhood of Whitechapel. Fagin stopped for an instant at the corner of the street; and, glancing suspiciously round, crossed the road, and struck off in the direction of the Spitalfields.

The mud lay thick upon the stones, and a black mist hung over the streets; the rain fell sluggishly down, and everything felt cold and clammy to the touch. It seemed just the night when it befitted such a being as Fagin to be abroad. As he glided stealthily along, creeping beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways, the old man seemed like some dinosaur, engendered in the slime and darkness through which he moved: crawling forth, by night, in search of some rich offal for a meal.

He kept on his course, through many winding and narrow ways, until he reached Bethnal Green; then, turning suddenly off to the left, he soon became involved in a maze of the mean and dirty streets which abound in that close and densely-populated quarter.

Fagin was evidently too familiar with the ground he traversed to be at all bewildered, either by the darkness of the night, or the intricacies of the way. He hurried through several alleys and streets, and at length turned into one, lighted only by a single lamp at the farther end. At the door of a house in this street, he knocked; having exchanged a few muttered words with the person who opened it, he walked upstairs.

A dog growled as he touched the handle of a room-door; and a man’s voice demanded who was there.

“Only me, Bill; only me, my dear,” said Fagin looking in.

“Bring in your body then,” said Sikes. “Lie down, you stupid brute! Don’t you know the devil when he’s got a great-coat on?”

Apparently, the dog had been somewhat deceived by Mr. Fagin’s outer garment; for as he unbuttoned it, and threw it over the back of a chair, he retired to the corner from which he had risen, wagging his tail as he went, to show that he was as well satisfied as it was in his nature to be.

“Well!” said Sikes.

“It is cold, said the Fagin as he warmed his skinny hands over the fire. “It seems to go right through one,” added the old man, touching his side.

“It must be a piercer, if it finds its way through your heart,” said Mr. Sikes. “Give him something to drink, Nancy*. Burn my body, make haste! It’s enough to turn a man ill, to see his lean old carcass shivering in that way, like a ugly ghost just rose from the grave.”

A long silence ensued; during which Fagin was plunged in deep thought, with his face wrinkled into an expression of villainy perfectly demoniacal. Sikes eyed him furtively from time to time. Nancy sat with her eyes fixed upon the fire.

• A woman called Nancy is in the room too and it is she Sikes turns to in this final paragraph

Time: 25 minutes (as indicated for this published task).

Marks: 22.