Quote 1
"He’ll come to be scragged, won’t he?"
"I don’t know what that means," replied Oliver, looking round.
"Something in this way, old feller," said Charley. As he said it, Master Bates caught up an end of his neckerchief, and, holding it erect in the air, dropped his head on his shoulder, and jerked a curious sound through his teeth, thereby indicating, by a lively pantomimic representation that scragging and hanging were one and the same thing. (18.39-41)
Oliver doesn’t know cant, or criminal’s slang – but neither do we. We’re in the same position as Oliver, here – in need of a translator. And Charley is so obliging as to throw in a little pantomime to go along with his translation.
But what about Dickens’s language, here? He describes Charley’s pantomime with very precise, almost journalistic detail, as though he’s just a detached observer who doesn’t know what’s going on, either. Why would he do that? Is he trying to distance himself from the criminals who know cant? But we know he knows the slang – he’s the one writing it. What else could he be up to here?
Quote 2
"[…] ’cause nobody will never know half of what he was. How will he stand in the Newgate Calendar? P’raps not be there at all. Oh, my eye, my eye, wot a blow it is!" (43.35)
Charley’s an example of the bad kind of reader of criminal biographies. He was one of the ones who made Fagin’s copy of the Newgate Calendar (see quotation above) "thumbed with use." He reads the collections of criminal biographies, and dreams of becoming notorious enough to be included in later editions, and is depressed at the thought that the Dodger might not make it into the Newgate Calendar because he was arrested for such a petty crime.