Bill Sikes

Role in the novel

He is one of Dickens's most vicious characters and a very strong force in the novel when it comes to having control over somebody or harming others. He is portrayed as a rough and barbaric man. Sikes is a career criminal associated with Fagin, and an eventual murderer. He is violent and aggressive, prone to sudden bursts of extreme behaviour. He owns a dog named Bull's Eye, whose breed Dickens does not specify, describing him as "a white shaggy dog with his face scratched and torn in twenty places", and who dies a death that parallels Sikes' own.

Dickens describes his first appearance:

The man who growled out these words, was a stoutly-built fellow of about five-and-thirty, in a black velveteen coat, very soiled drab breeches, lace-up half boots, and grey cotton stockings which enclosed a bulky pair of legs, with large swelling calves—the kind of legs, which in such costume, always look in an unfinished and incomplete state without a set of fetters to garnish them. He had a brown hat on his head, and a dirty belcher handkerchief round his neck: with the long frayed ends of which he smeared the beer from his face as he spoke. He disclosed, when he had done so, a broad heavy countenance with a beard of three weeks' growth, and two scowling eyes; one of which displayed various parti-coloured symptoms of having been recently damaged by a blow.

His prostitute girlfriend Nancy tolerates his violent behaviour, because she loves him. However, when he thinks Nancy has betrayed him, Sikes viciously murders her. The murder is especially gruesome and one of the most graphic, frightening scenes Dickens ever wrote. In the end a mob hounds him through the streets of London until he hangs himself while trying to escape. It is left ambiguous as to whether or not this was intentional.

Sikes has almost no redeeming qualities, although Dickens does give him some shading: at the robbery in the countryside, Sikes, rather than leave Oliver at the scene of his botched burglary of Mrs. Maylie's house, picks him up and runs with him as far as he can, before hiding him in a ditch at the suggestion of an accomplice. After he brutally beats Nancy to death, he apparently is capable of feeling guilt—although this is essentially suspicion that Fagin lied to him about her betrayal, and fear of the possibility of being caught. Sikes lives in Bethnal Green and later moves to the squalid rookery area of London then called Jacob's Island, east of present-day Shad Thames.

Sikes' background and early life prior to joining Fagin are not mentioned in the book.

Theatrical portrayals

Sikes was played by Danny Sewell in the stage musical Oliver! which won several awards in the early 1960s. Oliver Reed played Sikes in the 1968 film musical Oliver! which also won several awards. In the latter, Sikes's death is changed slightly: while attempting to swing to another building to escape the mob, he is shot by a police officer and is hanged from the stomach.

Robert Newton played Sikes in the 1948 British film noir Oliver Twist.

In Disney's animated version, Oliver & Company (1988), Sikes is renamed Sykes and he is a cold-hearted loan shark who lives and works in a New York shipyard with his Dobermans, Roscoe and DeSoto and is voiced by Robert Loggia. Fagin, here depicted as a dogkeeper, owes him money. In a final confrontation, Sykes chases Fagin and the dogs into the subway tunnels until they reach the Brooklyn Bridge. While Roscoe and DeSoto are killed when they fall onto the electrified railway, Sykes fights with Oliver on the roof of his limousine, and is finally killed when his car collides with a train, sending his body falling into the East River.

In Disney's 1997 live action television production, Oliver Twist, Bill Sikes is played by David O'Hara.

Sikes is portrayed by actor Tom Hardy in the BBC One Oliver Twist (2007 miniseries), later aired in the United States on PBS's Masterpiece Classic.