Mr. Sowerberry is the undertaker who buys Oliver from Mr. Bumble after Oliver asks for more food in the workhouse. Sowerberry puts Oliver to work as a mute , a person who marches silently at the head of funerals wearing a top hat. Noah Claypole, a coarse young man who also works at Sowerberry's insults Oliver's dead mother, whereupon Oliver beats him up. For this, Oliver is in turn beaten by Sowerberry and confined to the cellar of the coffin shop.In the musical Oliver! , Sowerberry is remade into a humorously sinister figure rather than a menacing one. After Oliver thrashes Noah Claypole in the musical, Sowerberry enters drunk, lies down in an open coffin, announcing that it's comfotable , and falls asleep.