Mr. Sowerberry  Mr. Sowerberry is a fictional character who appears as a supporting antagonist in Charles Dickens' 1838 novel "Oliver Twist". He is an undertaker and coffin maker who owns and operates a small dark shop in a small town some 75 miles from London. This shop also serves as a dwelling for himself, his wife, a maidservant named Charlotte, an assistant named Noah Claypole, and, for a short period, as an apprentice, the protagonist of the novel, a young boy named Oliver Twist who has been 'purchased' from the local parish workhouse. 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"." The various stage and screen adaptations of the novel do their best to interpret this description in the guise of a slim, grey haired, older male. 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 portrayed somewhat humorously in the musical adaptation of the novel, particularly in his feigning subservience to Mrs. Sowerberry, Mr. Sowerberry is nonetheless a miser who, despite what wealth he has acquired over the years, does very little to improve the squalid lives of those around him simply because he believes it is the job of others and is therefore none of his concern. In the scene where he visits the home of a destitute family whose mother has died, there is no overt callousness, it is merely a job and nothing more. 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. His wife's outraged reaction leaves the spineless Mr. Sowerberry with no alternative but to give the boy a severe caning. For Oliver this is the last straw and inspires him to run away to London to seek his fortune. 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.