Jack Dawkins, known as the Artful Dodger, is a character in Oliver Twist, a novel by Charles Dickens first published in 1838. Dawkins is a skilled pickpocket, hence the flattering nickname. He is the leader of a gang of children pickpockets operating in the streets of London. Oliver Twist is an orphan born in a workhouse and sold off into an apprenticeship with a mortician. Oliver escapes from his master and travels to London, where he meets Jack Dawkins and sees first hand the harsh and cruel conditions of orphans and poor in the eighteenth-century city. Roman Polanski directed a 2005 version of the tale, starring Ben Kingsley, but it performed poorly at the box office.