Epsom

Epsom enters the narrative through Magwitch’s recollection of meeting Compeyson at the races more than twenty years earlier. The encounter began a partnership that exposed how sharply education, appearance, and social standing could affect the treatment of two men accused of the same crime.

The Meeting at the Races

Magwitch remembers encountering Compeyson at Epsom races, on the eve of the great race. Compeyson was at a booth on the heath with other men; the landlord, who knew Magwitch and shared his sporting interests, called Compeyson out and suggested that Magwitch might suit him. Their first exchange was marked by contrast: Compeyson wore fine clothes and displayed a watch, chain, ring, and breast-pin, while Magwitch appeared, in Compeyson’s judgment, to be out of luck.

A Partnership Unequal from the Start

Compeyson presented himself as a gentleman. He had attended a public boarding-school, possessed an education, spoke smoothly, and understood the manners of genteel society. Magwitch, by contrast, described a life shaped by poverty, insecure work, and repeated imprisonment. Their association therefore joined men whose outward respectability and social experience were markedly different, a difference that would later become consequential in court.

The Trial and Its Class Bias

Magwitch recalls that, after years of association, he and Compeyson were charged with putting stolen notes into circulation, with further charges also pending. Compeyson proposed separate defences and no communication. Magwitch was so poor that he sold nearly all his clothes to secure Mr. Jaggers’s assistance.

At trial, Magwitch saw the same social contrast reframed as evidence of character. Compeyson looked like a gentleman, while Magwitch appeared common; witnesses more readily identified Magwitch, and the prosecution’s evidence seemed to weigh more heavily against him. Compeyson’s counsel emphasized that his client was younger and well brought up, while Magwitch was older and poorly brought up. Compeyson’s schooling, respectable acquaintances, and polished speech supported his image; Magwitch’s prior convictions and inability to answer the court with comparable eloquence counted against him.

The verdict made the inequality concrete. Compeyson was recommended to mercy for his good character and bad company and received seven years; Magwitch was convicted and sentenced to fourteen. Magwitch’s memory of Epsom thus reaches beyond the beginning of a criminal partnership: it identifies the origin of a relationship whose unequal power was reinforced by the social judgments of the courtroom.

Narrative Significance

Epsom is not developed as a sustained setting; its importance lies in the remembered meeting that links the two men’s later histories. The races provide the starting point for the contrast between Compeyson’s cultivated appearance and Magwitch’s stigmatized past, a contrast that becomes a practical disparity in legal outcomes. Through Magwitch’s account, the place marks the beginning of a partnership whose consequences expose how class and respectability could shape judgments of guilt and punishment.