For a short period it's also the dwelling of the protagonist of the novel, a young boy named Oliver Twist who has been "purchased" from the local parish workhouse to serve as an apprentice.

In the novel Sowerberry is described as a "tall gaunt, large jointed man, attired in a suit of threadbare black, with darned cotton stockings of the same colour, and shoes to answer".

Funerary practices and social customs of the time add depth to this character sometimes presenting him as a weak, miserly, menacing and unwelcome dark spectre.

Although to some extent he seems kindly disposed to Oliver, after a justified rebellion due to bullying by the older Noah and his callous attack on the memory of the orphan's deceased mother, he severely interrogates the boy.

When his shrew of a wife unsympathetically takes Noah's side, backing his taunting insults of Oliver's parentage, the orphan defiantly accuses her of lying.

What happens to the Sowerberrys following Oliver's departure we are not told, except that their servants Noah and Charlotte later steal money from them and run away to London themselves, to be taken in by Fagin and his band of young rogues.

In the novel, Dickens creates an image of the undertaker we have come to recognize so well as represented in the modern media:[2] an older tallish, thin man wearing all black, the costume of his trade.

[3] Specially designed black clothing, a slow moving funeral cortege, even paid mourners at the graveside, were features offered by most city undertakers.

David Lean created some very atmospheric settings in his movie version Oliver Twist which featured Gibb McLaughlin as Mr Sowerberry.

With the advent of television it was inevitable that the classic tale become a miniseries and in 1962 the BBC enlisted the talents of Donald Eccles to play the role of the undertaker.