The workhouses were social institutions for poor people.In the 17^th century Queen Elisabeth enacted the Poor Law for the relief of the poor people.

Dickens’s novels had the function of the contemporary medias. 

The novel "Oliver wants some more" is set in a workhouse. Oliver is the protagonist of the novel, he has nine years old .

Oliver is an unhealthy and hungry boy.  In the 4^th line the narrator uses irony: he employs language to suggest that Oliver is hungry. The technique of mixing pathos and grotesque is typical of Dickens’s poetry.

“Coal” is a key word of the Victorian Age. Dickens uses  rhetorical language.