Nelly, a child of great natural spiritual insight, acts as Benny's moral conscience; when she dies after a street accident, he is in despair.

Benny works hard, hoping to educate and better himself, but loses both job and reputation when Mr. Lawrence wrongly accuses him of stealing a five-pound note.

Her Benny was amongst the most popular examples of the 'waif story', a category of improving fiction for Victorian children whose purpose, although primarily religious (and typically Evangelical), was also social and political.

Some of them are alive today, others have gone to their rest.... [If my story] shall awaken any sympathy for the poor little waifs of our streets, I shall have my reward.His local knowledge also emerges in the book's vivid descriptions of Victorian Liverpool, and its careful attempts to reproduce the Scouse dialect.

Hocking's work however is also characteristic of Victorian evangelical fiction in the emphasis placed on Christian piety, and the role of inner spiritual renewal; his Methodist beliefs emerge especially clearly in Joe Wrag's prolonged struggle with the doctrine of Predestination.

Hocking's sense of pathos is also characteristically Victorian; in particular the name chosen for Benny's little sister, as well as her character and fate, seem calculated to recall to his readership Little Nell in Dickens's 1840/1841 novel The Old Curiosity Shop, who was also marked for a tragically early grave.