"A foul deed" by Frederic W. Pailthorpe — seventeenth illustration for "Oliver Twist" (1886)

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A foul deed

Frederic W. Pailthorpe

1886

10.6 cm high by 9.1 cm wide (4 inches by 3 ½ inches), vignetted

Seventeenth illustration for Oliver Twist in F. W. Pailthorpe's twenty-one hand-tinted engravings to be inserted in the 1838 three-volume Richard Bentley (first) edition. This illustration is keyed to vol. 3, p. 196.

[Click on image to enlarge it. See below for passage illustrated, commentary and comparisons with other illustrators' work; mouse over the text for links.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated: A Sensational and Grisly Murder (1838, 1871, 1910)

The housebreaker freed one arm, and grasped his pistol. The certainty of of immediate detection if he fired, flashed across his mind even in the midst of his fury; and he beat it twice with all the force he could summon, upon the upturned face that almost touched his own.

She staggered and fell: nearly blinded with the blood that rained down from a deep gash in her forehead; but raising herself, with difficulty, on her knees, drew from her bosom a white handkerchief — Rose Maylie's own — and holding it up, in her folded hands, as high towards Heaven as her feeble strength would allow, breathed one prayer for mercy to her Maker.

It was a ghastly figure to look upon. The murderer staggering backward to the wall, and shutting out the sight with his hand, seized a heavy club and struck her down. [Chapter XLVII, "Fatal Consequences," p. 271 in the 1846 edition]

Commentary: A Graphic Murder Scene

Although his realisation is not especially lurid, in that Sikes is not actually bludgeoning Nancy, Pailthorpe addresses the murder directly, rather than after the fact, as in the original serial and obliquely in the Household Edition illustration. In the latter, James Mahoney depicts Sikes as dragging the dog out of the room, leaving Nancy's corpse sprawled on the floor in He moved, backwards, towards the door: dragging the dog with him in Chapter 48, "The Flight of Sikes."

The readers of the 1871 Household Edition find an illustration that anticipates both the murder and its aftermath, in Chapter 47, "Fatal Consequences," before the quarrel between the common-law spouses even begins in The Adventures of Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress. The Mahoney illustration of a passage in Chapter 48 describing Nancy's body bleeding profusely from the face occurs on page 177, just the page before the textual passage in Chapter 47, setting up within the reader a sense of anticipation and dread not present in the original Cruikshank engravings. In the Charles Dickens Library Edition, Harry Furniss in a lithograph resembling the so-called "dark plates" of Hablot Knight Browne again realizes the murder only indirectly, with only the hands of Sikes and Nancy clearly visible in the terrible darkness as the murder is occurring.

In contrast to both Cruikshank and Mahoney, Pailthorpe (perhaps responding to popular conceptions about the nature of the criminal mind) depicts Sikes as a Neanderthal throwback who is raising his club to strike Nancy again. All the details from the text are evident in the illustration, including Sikes' pistol. In melodramatic fashion, a lurid, theatrical light plays over Nancy's dress as she screams in agony — making this the most sensational British nineteenth-century illustration of the horrific scene made famous on both sides of the Atlantic by Dickens's own dramatic reading of the violent scene in his tours of the United Kingdom and eastern seaboard of the United States (in 1842, and again in 1867).

Dickens's original serial illustrator, George Cruikshank in the January 1839 number of Bentley's Miscellany provided the scene in which Sikes, having murdered Nancy as a confidential informant for the Metropolitan London Police, attempts to drown the only witness to the deed — his dog, Bull's-Eye (Part 21, Chapter 48, "The Flight of Sikes"), in Sikes attempting to destroy his dog [see below].

Illustrations from the original serial (1838), and Later Editions (1867 and 1910

Left: George Cruikshank's "Sikes attempting to destroy his dog" (1839). Centre: Sol Eytinge, Junior's "Bill Sikes and Nancy" (1867). Right: Harry Furniss's Charles Dickens Library Editionillustration The Death of Nancy (1910) as a dark plate. [Click on images to enlarge them.]

Above: In the illustration of the murder scene in the Household Edition (1871) James Mahoney stage-manages matters sio that he obliquely shows the murder by depicting its aftermath: He moved, backwards, towards the door: dragging the dog with him (1871).

Related Material

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.

Cohen, Jane Rabb. "George Cruikshank." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980. Pp. 15-38.

Darley, Felix Octavius Carr. Character Sketches from Dickens. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1888.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. The Letters of Charles Dickens. Ed. Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson, and Angus Eassone. The Pilgrim Edition. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965. Vol. 1 (1820-1839).

Dickens, Charles. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1838; Chapman and Hall, 1846.

_______. The Letters of Charles Dickens. Ed. Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson, and Angus Eassone. The Pilgrim Edition. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965. Vol. 1 (1820-1839).

_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1865.

_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. Vol. XI.

_______. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 22 vols. Illustrated by James Mahoney. London: Chapman and Hall, 1871. Vol. I.

_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. III.

_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. The Waverley Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Charles Pears. London: Waverley, 1912.

Grego, Joseph (intro). Cruikshank's Water Colours. [27 Oliver Twist illustrations, including the wrapper and the 13-vignette title-page produced for F. W. Cosens; 20 plates for William Harrison Ainsworth's The Miser's Daughter: A Tale of the Year 1774; 20 plates plus the proofcover the work for W. H. Maxwell's History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798 and Emmetts Insurrection in 1803]. London: A & C Black, 1903. OT = pp. 1-106]. Book in the Rare Book Collection of the University of Toronto.

Pailthorpe, Frederic W. (Illustrator). Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist. London: Robson & Kerslake, 1886. Set No. 118 (coloured) of 200 sets of proof impressions.

Created 13 February 2015

Last modified 6 December 2021