Corruption of minors

In chapter 9, after Charley Bates and the Dodger practice picking Fagin's pockets, Dickens wrote this:

When the game had been played a great many times, a couple of young ladies came to see the young gentlemen, one of whom was called Bet and the other Nancy. They wore a great deal of hair, not very neatly turned up behind, and were rather untidy about the shoes and stockings. They were not exactly pretty, perhaps; but they had a great deal of colour in their faces, and looked quite stout and hearty. Being remarkably free and agreeable in their manners, Oliver thought them very nice girls indeed, as there is no doubt they were.


Presumably this means what I think it does. The two girls leave with Charley and the Dodger with some money to spend from Fagin. Hey, how old are Dodger and Charley?

Then I started reading a bit more of the introduction and came upon this:

Edward Wakefield's chapter on 'Nurseries of Crime', in his remarkable non-fiction 'Facts Relating to the Punishment of Death in the Metropolis' (1831), describes the use of girls by criminals like Fagin to draw boys, often as young as twelve, into thieving through 'the precocious excitement and gratification of the sexual passion'


Is this what Dickens was alluding to? If so, would Dickens' readers have understood this?

Yes, Victorian/Edwardian readers would have understood Dickens' allusion in that passage, and would have thought nothing more about it. To better understand some of the fiction from that time period, specifically fantasy stories like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, you need to be familiar with "The Victorian Cult of the Child", and the strange preoccupation with childhood innocence.
http://planelfenbeinturm.wordpress.c...-of-the-child/