Bung Against Spruggins: Reform in “Our Parish”

We recently examined the description in Sketches by Boz of an incident in the ecclesiastical Arches Court of Doctors’ Commons (Long and Schlicke). This was a case brought by Michael Bumple against Thomas Sludberry. It involved an accusation of “brawling” or “smiting” in the vestry-room of a church and a potential penalty of excommunication – that is, a banning from attendance at church for a set period. Boz’s account has been long recognized as founded on a case Dickens encountered while working in 1830 as a clerk in the Commons.

Boz has fun with the arcane and pompous procedures of the Court, contrasting them with the trivial and commonplace matters with which they are concerned, and ends his account hilariously by observing that Sludberry, excommunicated for a fortnight and ordered to pay costs, outrages the court by asking to be let off paying and instead excommunicated for life as he never goes to church anyway (86–91).

Inspection of the case on which Bumple against Sludberry was based reveals that the dispute culminated a lengthy wrangle between the ratepayers of the London parish of St. Bartholomew-the-Great and its self-appointed, self-perpetuating and, it was said, self-serving vestry; that is, the body which set its rates and oversaw relief of its poor. Similar disputes were occurring in other metropolitan parishes at the time. Eventually, the Vestries Act of 1831 provided parishioners with the right and mechanism to choose whether or not to elect their parochial representatives annually and so move from the long-established system of “select” or “closed” vestries to a more accountable and “open” arrangement.¹

In his account of Bumple against Sludberry, Boz makes no mention of this background, and we remarked on his reduction, at a time of political and social reform, of a factual example of social injustice to a titbit of fictional comic absurdity. We now draw attention to Boz’s reference, in another well-known sketch, to the process of political reform itself.

The Sketch

The fourth of the “Parish” sketches, “The Election for Beadle,” appeared in the Evening Chronicle of 14 July 1835. The chaos, rhetoric and skulduggery during the election foreshadow those that are to occur at Eatanswill, and the beadles who feature in this and other “Parish” sketches presage the later Mr. Bumble.

The sketch is perhaps best remembered for Boz’s account of the initial contenders for the position:

each of whom rested his claims to public support, entirely on the number and extent of his family, as if the office of beadle were originally instituted as an encouragement for the propagation of the human species. “Bung for Beadle. Five small children!” – “Hopkins for Beadle. Seven small children!!” – “Timkins for Beadle. Nine small children!!!” Such were the placards in large black letters on a white ground, which were plentifully pasted on the walls, and posted in the windows of the principal shops […] the nine small children would have run over the course, but for the production of another placard, announcing the appearance of a still more meritorious candidate. “Spruggins for Beadle. Ten small children (two of them twins), and a wife!!!” There was no resisting this; ten small children would have been almost irresistible in themselves, without the twins, but the touching parenthesis about that interesting production of nature, and the still more touching allusion to Mrs. Spruggins, must ensure success. Spruggins was the favourite at once, and the appearance of his lady, as she went about to solicit votes (which encouraged confident hopes of a still further addition to the house of Spruggins at no remote period), increased the general prepossession in his favour. The other candidates, Bung alone excepted, resigned in despair

(20–1).

This feature of the election is prominent in the illustration which Cruickshank provided for the monthly issue of the collected sketches, and was jokily highlighted by John Bright in the House of Commons when he made one of the very earliest references there to a work by Dickens.²

The Two Parties

Early in the sketch we are...