Oliver and the other boys at the workhouse are also very nearly 'worked to death'.

Oliver is (again figuratively) 'scared to death', at that key moment in the novel that that turns out also to define his fate (the extra gruel request scene) when he is selected by the other boys at the workhouse for that most terrifying, unpleasant task. Then, moments after he asks, Oliver becomes equally scared that his still not-quite-to-be-believed question has now caused (so-to-speak) 'all hell to break loose' inside the workhouse, among the comfortably well-off, incredulous, poorhouse administrators. These well-fed individuals in fact cannot fathom, at all, how any boy so "lucky" as to be boarded and fed at their workhouse could possibly be so ungrateful as to request more than his daily starvation-level ration of gruel.

When one day the boys draw lots to see who among them would be designated to ask for...
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