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During his final reading tour of Britain in 1868, Dickens added a very passionate and dramatic performance of the most horrific episode in the book. Dickens read these passages with such passion and violence that woman fainted in the aisles. Dickens's health had already been declining, and his family had begged him not to include this episode. It's now believed that this hastened his early death in June 1870.

Oliver, unknowing as we are, first sees Monks, "Rot you!" murmured the man, in a horrible passion; between his clenched teeth; "If I had only the courage to say the word, I might have been free of you in a night. Curses on your head, and black death on your heart you imp!"...He advanced towards Oliver, as if with the intention of aiming a blow at him, but fell violently on the ground: writhing and foaming, in a fit."

Mrs. Bedwin (Mr. Brownlow's housekeeper) - "He was a dear, grateful gentle child. I know what children are, sir; and have done these forty years".
Fagin - "Having prepared his mind, by solitude, and gloom, to prefer any
society to the companionship of his own sad thoughts in such a dreary place, he was now slowly instilling into his soul the poison which he hoped would blacken it, and change its hue for ever."

Poor Oliver! Mr Bumble, the Workhouse Board, and Mrs Sowerberry all cruelly despise his poverty. Noah Claypole too, being a "charity-boy, but not a workhouse orphan" looks down on him. "This affords charming food for contemplation. It shows us what a beautiful thing human nature may be made to be; and how impartially the same amiable qualities are developed in the finest lord and the dirtiest charity-boy".

Let it not be supposed that...Oliver was denied the benefit of exercise, the pleasure of society, or... of religious consolation. He was allowed to perform his ablutions every morning under the pump in a stone yard [with] repeated applications of the cane. In the hall...he was sociably flogged...and kicked into the same...at prayer-time [where the boys] prayed to be guarded from the sins and vices of Oliver Twist.