“So fur as I could find, there warn’t a soul that see young Abel Magwitch, with us little on him as in him, but wot caught fright at him, and either drove him off, or took him up. I was took up, took up, took up, to that extent that I reg’larly grow’d up took up.”
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 42. From Magwitch’s recount of his past to Pip and Herbert, it is clear that he was branded as a criminal from an early age. As an orphan child he was arrested or “took up” constantly. Magwitch is a good example of how a person can be a product of their environment. Difficult circumstances made him a criminal in his youth growing up an orphan in England. But after he was transported to Australia as a convict and allowed to work there, he was very successful as a sheep farmer and stock breeder and amassed a fortune.