J

Jack (GE) A ‘grizzled male creature’, wearing the ‘bloated’ shoes of a drowned seaman, in the riverside public house where Pip, Startop and Magwitch stay overnight. He ominously reports seeing ‘a four-oared galley going up with the tide’. (54)

Jack (SB) The man whose brutality to a young woman led to her death in hospital, although she claimed that her injuries were due to an accident. ‘Brute as the man was, he was not prepared for this. He turned his face from the bed, and sobbed’. (‘Characters: The Hospital Patient’)

Jack, Dark (UT) A negro sailor. (‘Poor Mercantile Jack’)

Jack, Mercantile (UT) A typical merchant seaman, who was liable to be duped and ill-treated in the Liverpool docks. (‘Poor Mercantile Jack’)

Jackman, Major James (CS) In Mrs Lirriper’s opinion, he was ‘a most obliging Lodger and punctual in all respects except one irregular which I need not particularly specify’ (i.e., he was late in paying his rent). Despite his military ways, there was some doubt whether he was a Major. He became the joint guardian (with Mrs Lirriper) of Jemmy Jackman Lirriper. (‘Mrs Lirriper’s Lodgings’ and ‘Mrs Lirriper’s Legacy’)

Jackson, Mr (CS) A former clerk in the firm of Barbox Brothers, which he eventually controlled and closed down. Because of the name on his luggage, he is

invariably called ‘Barbox Brothers’ in the story. Stopping at Mugby Junction by chance, he meets a little girl named Polly, whose mother turns out to be his former sweetheart, Beatrice Tresham. He also hears the Signalman’s ghostly story. (‘Mugby Junction’)

Jackson, Mr (PP) Dodson and Fogg’s clerk, who serves the Pickwickians with subpoenas to attend the trial of Bardell v. Pickwick and who later arrests Mrs Bardell. He was ‘an individual in a brown coat and brass buttons, whose long hair was scrupulously twisted round the rim of his napless hat, and whose soiled drab trousers were so tightly strapped over his Blucher boots, that his knees threatened every moment to start from their concealment’. (20, 31, 46)

Jacobs, Solomon (SB) The bailiff in whose sponging-house Mr Watkins Tottle is confined until he is released by the intervention of Mr Gabriel Parsons. (‘Tales: A Passage in the Life of Mr Watkins Tottle’)

Jacques (TTC) The name by which five of the French revolutionaries are known, including Defarge, who is ‘Jacques Four’. When Monsieur the Marquis is killed by Gaspard in his bed at the château, the knife in his heart has a frill of paper round the hilt, on which is scrawled: ‘Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques’. (I: 5; II: 8, 9, 15, 16, 21-23; III: 5, 9, 12, 14, 15)

Jaggers, Mr (GE) Miss Havisham’s lawyer, who was also employed by Magwitch

to handle all the business connected with Pip’s ‘great expectations’. Pip first sees him at Satis House: ‘He was a burly man of an exceedingly dark complexion, with an exceedingly large head and a corresponding large hand. He took my chin in his large hand and turned up my face to have a look at me by the light of the candle. He was prematurely bald on the top of his head, and had bushy black eyebrows that wouldn’t lie down, but stood up bristling. His eyes were set very deep in his head, and were disagreeably sharp and suspicious. He had a large watch chain, and strong black dots where his beard and whiskers would have been if he had let them . . . his hand smelt of scented soap.’ He has an abrupt and disconcerting manner, expressing himself with a lawyer’s extreme caution; he is held in awe by his clients. This professional manner of his, according to Wemmick, his clerk, was deliberately mysterious: ‘Always seems to me . . . as if he had set a man-trap and was watching it. Suddenly-quick – you’re caught!’ He is, says Wemmick, as deep as Australia: ‘If there was anything deeper . . . he’d be it.’ It somehow seems appropriate that Jaggers should have been fascinated by the uncouth Bentley Drummle, whom he called the ‘Spider’. He employs as his housekeeper a woman named Molly, whose acquittal for murder he had secured (despite her guilt) and whose daughter by Magwitch was Estella, whose adoption by Miss Havisham had been arranged by Jaggers (since, as he told Pip, ‘here was one pretty little child out of the heap who could be saved’). (11, 18, 20, 24, 26, 29, 30, 36, 40, 48, 49, 51, 55, 56)

James Dickens gives this name to the servant who waits at table in Mrs Tibbs’s boarding-house (SB: ‘Tales: The Boarding-House’), Mr Brook Dingwall’s servant (SB: ‘Tales: Sentiment’), and the Bayham Badgers’ butler (BH 13).