Figure 1.-- There is an interesting scene at the very end of the film meant to underscore a happy ending. A reader remembers a park scene, "There is a scene in the film showing school uniforms of wealthy pupils. The children are in a park. A group of girls are walking through and a class of boys push them in the water fountain." The children are done in light-blue uniforms, the boys in back-buttoning tunic suits or smocks, the girls in dresses and pantalettes.

Dickens published 'Oliver Twist' in 1837-39. This was at a time that Parliament was just beginning the social reforms meant to address the needs of the new industrial working-class created by the Industrail Revolution. One of those needs was public education. The idea of free public education for the public was still a novel idea in the 1830s, bot only in Britin, but most of the world. The only places where public education was well established were America and Prussia and other German states. Britain in facr would lag behind much of Eutope, at least northern Europe in the estblishment of free state-sponsored schools. Here the land-holding aristocracy resisted and had the power in Parliament to prevent needed reforms. Only with Parlimntary reforms begun with the Great Reform Act (1832) that the Middle Class and new industrial class had the votes in Parliment to behin needed labor, social, and educational reforms. Soon after Queen Victoria rose to the throne (1837). After she married Pribce Albert, under his tutelage, the reformers had a powerful ally in the monarchy. Education would be one of the most difficult to change and Britian would not begin to estblish state schools until seceral decades later (1860s). There is an interesting scene at the very end of the film meant to underscore a happy ending. A reader remembers a park scene, "There is a scene in the film showing school uniforms of wealthy pupils. The children are in a park. A group of girls are walking through and a class of boys push them in the water fountain." The children are done in light-blue uniforms, the boys in back-buttoning tunic suits or smocks, the girls in dresses and pantalettes. This would have not been a depiction of a public (private boardung school). First of all these were boys' schools and scond the age was not right. We know that some grammar schools had tunic uniforms, but a dark blue was used. The tunics were not back-buttoning and as far as we know, smocks were not worn. And these also were boys' schools. So it was a highly idealized depiction of schools at the time. Although some public schools has uniform, as far as we know the private schools for younger boys did not. Readers may want to have a look at the HBC school section which has information on 19th century English schools. A reader tells us that we are wrong about when the sene appears. He reports, "The scene appears in the film after Oliver has been rescued and he is in the care of a wealthy family, who turns out to be his grandfather. The scene happened during the musical number 'Who will buy this Beautiful morning'." Everything looked secure for Oliver but Bill Sykes and Nancy are plotting to recapture him because he knows too much about Fagin and the criminal activities.