The novel begins with the birth of Oliver Twist in a workhouse in an unnamed town. Oliver is born extremely frail and has difficulty breathing, “rather unequally poised between this world and the next: the balance being decidedly in favour of the latter” (3). After Oliver’s first cry, his mother demands that she sees him before she dies. The surgeon and nurse insist that the young mother will not be dying anytime soon, but after holding and kissing Oliver on the forehead, Oliver’s mother dies. The nurse and the surgeon discuss how Oliver’s mother was found in the street the night before. It is noted that the now-deceased young woman was not married and she remains unnamed. Oliver thus becomes an orphan and a parish child.

Oliver is sent from one workhouse to another, a “child farm” of sorts, where juvenile offenders are kept by the state. Mrs. Mann, the head of the workhouse, skimps wherever she can and pockets most of the stipend rather than spend money on the children. Children are forced to “exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food” (8). Children frequently die in the workhouse, often from starvation, but the deaths are consistently overlooked and even covered up by parish officials.