One of the odd minor characters in Oliver Twist is named Charley Bates.  At certain points--usually when he is being especially boisterous--he is named Master Bates.  Dickens thereby engages with the popular nineteenth-century discourse that claimed that masturbation led to physical deformity, depravity, and criminality.  Dickens also elaborates here on a theme running throughout the novel, namely, that sex = death.  Master Bates pantomimes hanging and the moment of death.  In terms of the larger discourse of masturbation this makes sense in that masturbation is a form of non-procreative sexuality.  It is simply a death of the self rather than a propagation of the self.  It leads to the eventual decay of the self.  In terms of the novel specifically, it is clear that any sexuality not sanctioned by society leads to death.  This is confirmed in the deaths of Oliver's mother and Nancy.  Thus Master Bates's pantomime becomes an emblem for the novel in general.
 
 
 
 

Master Bates nodded assent, and would have spoken, but the
recollection of Oliver's flight came so suddenly upon him, that
the smoke he was inhaling got entagled with a laugh, and went up
into his head, and down into his throat: and brought on a fit of
coughing and stamping, about five minutes long.

'Look here!' said the Dodger, drawing forth a handful of
shillings and halfpence. 'Here's a jolly life!  What's the odds
where it comes from?  Here, catch hold; there's plenty more where
they were took from.  You won't, won't you?  Oh, you precious
flat!'

'It's naughty, ain't it, Oliver?' inquired Charley Bates. 'He'll
come to be scragged, won't he?'

'I don't know what that means,' replied Oliver.

'Something in this way, old feller,' said Charly.  As he said it,
Master Bates caught up an end of his neckerchief; and, holding it
erect in the air, dropped his head on his shoulder, and jerked a
curious sound through his teeth; thereby indicating, by a lively
pantomimic representation, that scragging and hanging were one
and the same thing.

'That's what it means,' said Charley.  'Look how he stares, Jack!

I never did see such prime company as that 'ere boy; he'll be the
death of me, I know he will.'  Master Charley Bates, having
laughed heartily again, resumed his pipe with tears in his eyes.