S

Sampson, Mr (HD) The Chief Manager of a Life Assurance Office, who narrates the story, ‘Hunted Down’. He helps Meltham to entrap Julius Slinkton, who has killed one of his (Slinkton’s) nieces.

Sanders, Mrs (PP) A ‘big, fat, heavyfaced personage’, who was one of Mrs Bardell’s friends. At the trial of Bardell v. Pickwick, she stated that she had always said and believed that ‘Pickwick would marry Mrs Bardell’. (26, 34, 46)

Sapsea, Thomas (MED) The auctioneer in Cloisterham. ‘Accepting the Jackass as the type of self-sufficient stupidity and conceit – a custom, perhaps, like some few other customs, more conventional than fair – then the purest Jackass in Cloisterham is Mr Thomas Sapsea, Auctioneer.’ He is ‘portentous and dull . . . much nearer sixty years of age than fifty’, rather portly, and ‘a credit to Cloisterham, and society’. His epitaph to his late wife (formerly, Miss Brobity, a schoolmistress) is largely self-praise, including the statement that his ‘Knowledge of the World, / Though somewhat extensive, / Never brought him acquainted with / A SPIRIT / More capable of / Looking up to him.’ He becomes the Mayor of Cloisterham. (4, 6, 12, 14-16, 18)

Saunders, Mr (SYC) A bachelor friend

who visits the Whifflers and their children. Mr Whiffler asks him to be the godfather of the ninth child his wife is expecting. ‘“Not a ninth!” cries the friend, all aghast at the idea.’ (‘The Couple who Dote upon their Children’)

Sawyer, Bob (PP) A medical student at Guy’s Hospital, Bob Sawyer has ‘about him that sort of slovenly smartness, and swaggering gait, which is peculiar to young gentlemen who smoke in the streets by day, shout and scream in the same by night, call waiters by their Christian names, and do various other acts and deeds of an equally facetious description. He wore a pair of plaid trousers, and a large rough doublebreasted waistcoat; out of doors, he carried a thick stick with a big top. He eschewed gloves, and looked, upon the whole, something like a dissipated Robinson Crusoe.’ He lodges with Mrs Raddle in Lant Street (where Dickens lodged as a boy) but angers her through his failure to pay the rent. He and his close friend, Benjamin Allen, eventually become unsuccessful medical practitioners in Bristol (‘Sawyer, late Nockemorf’). It was intended that Bob Sawyer would marry Arabella Allen, Benjamin’s sister, but he is forestalled in this by Mr Winkle. Having been made bankrupt, he and Benjamin Allen take up surgical appointments in the East India Company. (30, 32, 38-39, 47-48, 50-52, 57)

Saxby, Long (DS) One of Cousin Feenix’s acquaintances, a ‘man of six foot ten’. (51)

Scadder, Zephaniah (MC) The rascally agent who sells Martin Chuzzlewit a worthless plot of land in Eden. Because he wore his shirt collar open, ‘every time he spoke something was seen to twitch and jerk up in his throat, like the little hammers in a harpsichord when the notes are struck. Perhaps it was the Truth feebly endeavouring to leap to his lips. If

Figure 28 Benjamin Allen, Tom Cripps (the errand boy), Bob Sawyer, and Mr Winkle by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz)

so, it never reached them.’ He had deepset grey eyes, one of which was blind, and each ‘long black hair upon his head hung down as straight as any plummet line’. (21).