We first meet the odiously pompous Mr Bumble, "a fat man and choleric," as Dickens tells us, when as "porochial" beadle he introduces Oliver Twist to life in the workhouse.
   Bumble is a man whose ego is as lagre as his intellect is small, a man without a shred of compassion, motivated entirely by self interest. He gets his come-uppance when, hoping for advancement and greater domestic comfort, makes the mistake of marrying the domineering and shrewish matron of the workhouse.
   Exchanging his position as beadle for that of master of the workhouse strips him of any real authority and dignity. "Bumble had fallen," says Dickens, "from all the height and pomp of beadleship to the lowest depth of the most snubbed hen-peckery."
   David's sculpture has Bumble's house adjoining the workhouse through an archway. Here, despite his termagant of a wife, he would have lived in reasonable style until the final ironic twist to the tale brings disgrace to the unpleasant pair. "Mr and Mrs Bumble, deprived of their situation, were gradually reduced to great indigence and misery, and finally became paupers in that very same workhouse in which they had once lorded it over others."