Dickens continues his violent assaults on the conditions fostered by the Poor Law of 1834, which instituted the workhouses and the attendant brutal and cynical treatment of helpless paupers, young and old alike. The practice of deliberately starving the unfortunates arouses the author's furious indignation, and he denounces it again and again. Furthermore, he does not spare individuals who take advantage of the victims of poverty in order to exploit their labor at the cost of a mite of food.
We are again reminded how much Oliver is at the mercy of chance. If the dim-sighted magistrate had not glanced about in search of the inkstand, he would not have noticed the boy's frightened expression, and the documents of apprenticeship would have been signed, dooming Oliver to the horrors of cleaning chimneys under a heartless master.
A variety of irony is dramatic irony, a term applied to a situation in a play when the actors are ignorant of the true significance of the circumstances or the words spoken, while the audience is informed of the actual state of affairs. A highly ironical development of that sort occurs in the scene between the undertaker and Mr. Bumble. When Sowerberry compliments the beadle on his elegant coat button, Bumble explains proudly that it is a reward from the board: "The die is the same as the porochial seal — the Good Samaritan healing the sick and bruised man." The speakers are oblivious to the cutting irony.
Dickens regularly injects irony into a single descriptive phrase. Thus Bumble is dubbed "that dignitary" and the like, but his true nature is transparent. Often, the application of "philosopher" carries negative connotations, particularly when used in connection with the political economists who were apologists for the current attitudes Dickens found so distasteful. These "philosophers" were individuals that he would have share Oliver's dog-food leftovers. At the time Dickens was writing, "philosophy" might be used with reference to various branches of learning. But the term means literally "love of wisdom," so the irony is potent when Dickens refers to individuals he considers to be guilty of an appalling lack of wisdom and logic as "philosophers." Similarly, when he describes Mrs. Mann's less-than-kindly treatment of orphans, she is declared to be "a very great experimental philosopher."
