Saffron Hill
Saffron Hill is one of the most notorious and degraded localities in Charles Dickens's London, a narrow, filthy street in the East End that functions as the operational headquarters of Fagin's criminal gang. It is the place where Oliver Twist is first brought after meeting the Artful Dodger, and it remains the gravitational center of the underworld throughout the novel—the site of Fagin's den, the Three Cripples public house, and the daily commerce of pickpockets and thieves. More than a mere setting, Saffron Hill embodies the social and moral squalor that the novel's institutions—the workhouse, the parish, the law—conspire to produce and then punish.
Location and Physical Character
Saffron Hill is introduced when the Dodger leads Oliver through a labyrinth of narrow streets on their way to Fagin's den. The approach passes through Exmouth Street and Coppice Row, down a little court by the side of the workhouse, across the classic ground of Hockley-in-the-Hole, and into Little Saffron Hill before reaching Saffron Hill the Great. The street itself is described as very narrow and muddy, with the air impregnated with filthy odours. The only stock in trade in its small shops appears to be heaps of children, who crawl in and out at the doors or scream from the inside even at night. The sole places that seem to prosper amid the general blight are the public-houses, where the lowest orders of Irish are wrangling with might and main. Covered ways and yards diverge from the main street, disclosing little knots of houses where drunken men and women positively wallow in filth, and from several doorways, great ill-looking fellows emerge cautiously, bound on no well-disposed or harmless errands.
The Three Cripples and the Criminal Network
At the heart of Saffron Hill stands the Three Cripples, the public-house where Mr. Sikes and his dog have already figured and where Fagin conducts much of his business. It is here that Fagin comes searching for Sikes after the failed Chertsey burglary, and here that he meets with the mysterious Monks for their clandestine conferences. The establishment is a dark and gloomy den where a flaring gas-light burns all day in winter and where no ray of sun ever shines in summer. It is also the place where Noah Claypole, newly arrived in London with Charlotte, chooses to lodge, and where Fagin recruits him into the gang. The Three Cripples functions as a commercial colony of petty larceny, visited at early morning and at dusk by silent merchants who traffic in dark back-parlours.
Fagin's Den and the Gang's Operations
Fagin's den itself is located in a house near Field Lane, at the bottom of Saffron Hill. The building is described as having rooms upstairs with great high wooden chimney-pieces and large doors, with panelled walls and cornices to the ceiling, all black with neglect and dust. Oliver concludes that a long time ago, before the old Jew was born, it had belonged to better people and had perhaps been quite gay and handsome. The den is where the gang's daily operations are planned and where the stolen goods—handkerchiefs, watches, and jewellery—are sorted and stored. It is also where Fagin plays his infamous game of picking pockets with the boys, training them in the arts of theft.
Narrative Significance
Saffron Hill stands in stark contrast to the respectable neighborhoods of Pentonville and the countryside where the Maylies live. It represents the nadir of London's social geography, a place where poverty and crime are so interwoven that they become indistinguishable. The street's physical filth mirrors the moral corruption of its inhabitants, yet Dickens also shows that this degradation is not innate but produced by the same social system that condemns it. Saffron Hill is where Oliver is brought to be corrupted, where Nancy lives and dies, and where the final pursuit of Sikes culminates in his death at Jacob's Island. It is the dark pole of the novel's moral compass, against which the possibility of redemption and escape is measured.
