There are historians who say that Fagin was based on Henry Murphy, a free Black Londoner who was known in the time of Dickens as Henry the Child Stealer. Murphy, like Fagin, would hold children at a hideout and send waves of them into the streets, forcing them to beg or steal, then return the profits to him. There are historians who say that Henry Murphy was Fagin in real life but that Dickens, out of whatever sympathy he held toward Black people, decided to make the Fagin of Oliver Twist a Jewish villain.
