<P> The situation is now escalated by Charles Dickens: Magwitch, as a deported criminal, would be without doubt sentenced to death if recognized by the authorities . Wemmick and Herbert (during one of Pip's stays at the country) discover that they are being watched and lodge Magwitch (who is to go by the name of Mr. Campbell) in the house of Herbert's fiancée . An escape for Magwitch from England is prepared . Magwitch is to be put aboard a steamer bound for Hamburg . As it is not possible to board at a port due to Magwitch's wanted status, they try to row to the steamer from the banks of the Thames in Essex after the steamer has left the port of London . Unusually, a well - manned boat comes out to intercept them as they aim for the steamer . Magwitch recognizes Compeyson on this boat and goes for him . They both end up in the water where Compeyson is drowned . Magwitch is immediately arrested and clapped in irons, having suffered a bad chest wound during these events . </P> <P> Pip now considers Magwitch a friend . He makes frequent visits to the ailing Magwitch and holds his hand throughout Magwitch's new trial, where Magwitch receives a death sentence . (This conviction for felony also causes the forfeiture of all his money, thus destroying Pip's great expectations .) Magwitch is declining in health and is being held in the infirmary when Pip at last tells him that his child, Estella, is alive . Pip goes on to tell him that she is a beautiful lady and that he, Pip, was in love with her . Pip has found this information out, as Wemmick told him Molly's story and he recognized her to be Estella's mother . With a last pressure on Pip's hand, Magwitch dies a good and very content man . </P> <P> Charles Barrow, Charles Dickens' maternal grandfather, had been the Head of the Moneys Section at the Navy Pay Office . In 1810 it was found that he had been systematically falsifying his accounts for nine years . During this period he had embezzled nearly £ 6,000 . Threatened with legal proceedings Charles Barrow fled abroad, eventually dying in the Isle of Man, outside English legal jurisdiction, in 1826, when Dickens was fourteen years old . Legal outlawry must have produced some cloaked, mysterious references to his absent maternal grandfather . Flight overseas for suspected felons, bankrupts and indeed any persons visited with moral or social disgrace, was a commonplace of Victorian life and fiction . But two situations are always charged with heightened atmosphere in Dickens' novels . The first is the menace that forever surrounds the lives of the respectable from the very existence of a criminal friend or relative at large - this is the fate of Mrs Rudge, the dark secret of David Copperfield's aunt, Betsy Trotwood, the strange tension of Mrs Clennam's tomb - like home in Little Dorrit, the central situation of Great Expectations . The other is the extraordinary vividness of foiled attempts by criminals to get away from England's shores . The dramatic police interception of the illegally returned transported convict Magwitch's attempt to get to the Continent and to liberty, is one of the prime examples of this situation . (The other is the' Anwerks package' scene in Martin Chuzzlewit when Jonas Chuzzlewit, the murderer, is turned back as he boards ship for the Low Countries). These scenes have a detail of circumstance and a power of apprehension that suggests the feeding of fiction by an often told family story . </P> <P> In 1816, Charles Dickens' father, John, had been appointed to one of the principal naval dockyards in Chatham at the mouth of the River Medway in Kent, 30 miles south - east of London . With his father, accompanying him in the course of his duty into the dockyard or on sailing trips up the River Medway, Dickens must have first seen the convicts who worked at unloading, and the marshes at Cooling, north - east of Chatham, off which the galley ships lay - scenes which would play a part in the story of his fictional self, Pip, and Pip's benefactor, Magwitch . </P>

When does pip discover magwitch is his benefactor