Bank of England

The Bank of England enters David Copperfield through a criminal case rather than through a description of the institution itself: a prisoner known as Number Twenty-Seven was convicted in a large fraud against it. The episode makes the Bank a target of organized financial crime and a point of contrast with the novel’s broader account of debt, credit, and imprisonment.

Appearance in the Prison Visit

During a visit to the prison run by Mr. Creakle, David asks a warder what Number Twenty-Seven had done. The warder identifies the offence as a fraud on the Bank of England and explains that the prisoner acted with others, setting them in motion as part of a deep plot for a large sum. The account supplies no further description of the Bank’s structure or ordinary business; its significance here comes from the scale and nature of the crime directed against it.

The Case Against Number Twenty-Seven

The warder groups fraud, forgery, and conspiracy as the offences, and describes Number Twenty-Seven as the knowingest member of the group. He had nearly evaded capture, but the Bank ultimately helped bring the case to a close. The prisoner received a sentence of transportation for life. These details present the Bank not just as the name attached to a victim, but as the target whose case exposes a coordinated scheme and leads to a severe legal consequence.

The warder then describes Number Twenty-Eight’s separate offence: theft of roughly two hundred and fifty pounds in money and valuables from a young master on the night before they were to travel abroad. The account does not connect that robbery to the Bank. Its proximity instead distinguishes the Bank fraud from another prisoner's theft, keeping the scale and organization of Number Twenty-Seven’s crime in view.

Debt, Fraud, and Narrative Significance

The Bank case sits against the novel’s earlier treatment of Mr. Micawber, who is arrested for debts and later discharged under the Act after his petition is heard. That storyline concerns inability to pay and the consequences of creditors’ claims; the Bank case, by contrast, is explicitly presented as fraud, forgery, and conspiracy. The distinction prevents financial distress and deliberate criminal deception from collapsing into a single category.

Because the Bank appears only in the warder’s report, the episode offers no institutional portrait or account of its internal procedures. Its narrative function is narrower but pointed: the name marks the victim of a large, organized fraud, while the lifelong transportation sentence marks the legal gravity of the offence. The case also sharpens the prison visit’s attention to what lies behind the prisoners’ outward presentation by giving David concrete information about the crimes that brought particular men there.