The Midnight Gang

The Midnight Gang (2016) is a humorous children’s adventure novel by David Walliams. After a game of cricket at his boarding school goes awry, 12-year-old Tom Charper wakes up in London’s Lord Funt Hospital, where he makes friends with a crew of young patients intent on making dreams come true. With themes of The Therapeutic Value of Imagination, Adults as Allies and Adversaries, and Achieving Dreams Through Collective Effort, The Midnight Gang explores the value of empathy in interpersonal relationships and the power of hope.

This guide uses the 2016 edition by HarperCollins Children’s Books.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of bullying, illness and death, ableism, and substance use.

Plot Summary

12-year-old Tom Charper regains consciousness as an aide, Porter, pushes him on a trolley in London’s Lord Funt Hospital. Tom gradually recalls his circumstances: While daydreaming during a cricket match at St. Willet’s Boarding School for Boys, a ball hit him on the head. An awkward physician, Doctor Luppers, investigates Tom’s bump, then admits Tom to the children’s ward for observation.

Matron, the strict children’s ward manager, laughs cruelly over Tom’s head bump. Since Tom’s parents are far away (he sees them only on school breaks) and cannot visit or bring pajamas, Matron forces him to change into a pink nightdress. Tom shyly says hello to the other patients: Sally, whose hair is gone due to treatment for her illness; Amber, who wears casts on all four limbs; Robin, who has bandages over his eyes; and George, recovering from tonsillectomy. Matron expects silence and no leaving the beds after lights out. However, George, Amber, and Robin drug Matron into a deep sleep by placing sleeping pills in candy, which Matron confiscates and eats. The children sneak out of the ward, rejecting Tom’s wish to join their gang. They leave Sally behind as well. Tom follows them. Sally begs to go too, but Tom is concerned she may hold him up. He promises to tell her what occurs. Tom catches up with George, Amber, and Robin in the basement and threatens to tell unless they bring him along.

Amber permits Tom to join their secret gang on a trial basis; she says the purpose of the Midnight Gang, which has a membership that changes as child patients come and go, is to make children’s dreams come true. For example, she has always wanted to explore the North Pole, and tonight she will fulfill that dream. When they enter the basement deep freeze, they find a frozen land with an igloo and snowdrifts. Porter arrives dressed in a polar bear suit; Tom is surprised that Porter is the one responsible for the elaborate setup. Porter has also helped the Midnight Gang supply countless other children over many years with a dream-come-true moment while in the hospital.

Going back to the ward, Tom is sworn into the gang, but he must promise to keep all adventures secret; he consequently breaks his promise to Sally. He feels terrible, but having never had close friends, he does not want to break his vow. The next morning, after a clean X-ray, Dr. Luppers tries to discharge Tom, but Tom fakes a high fever so that he can stay.

That night, the gang sneaks out to make George’s dream of flying come true, leaving Sally behind once again. To bring about this dream, Porter, Tom, Amber, George, and Robin steal all the hospital’s helium balloons. George is about to drift to the top of the hospital stairwell when Nelly, an elderly patient, takes his balloons, flies up the stairwell, and breaks through the skylight. The Midnight Gang chases Nelly around London in an ambulance until she drifts down. Back at the hospital, Matron and the hospital administrator, Sir Strillers, accost the gang.

Sir Strillers fires Porter, and Matron takes the children to the ward, where Sally says her dream is to experience the moments in her life that she is afraid may never come. Tom’s headmaster, Mr. Thews, arrives to take Tom, whose fever was discovered to be fake, back to school. Intent on fulfilling Sally’s dream, Tom flees down a laundry chute. He hides in a dark basement room, Porter’s secret home. When Mr. Thews and Matron come to search, Tom hears them brag about using cruelty to control children and stopping Tom’s parents’ efforts to contact him. Porter later reveals that he was abandoned at the hospital as an infant and that, growing up as a patient there, he started the Midnight Gang. He became a porter as a teen and has helped the gang ever since.

For Sally’s dream, Tom plans to stage vignettes showing life milestones with Sally as the star. Porter and Tom administer a sedative to Matron. Tom rescues Sally from the isolation ward as the others prepare her life story with props, music, and a slideshow. Sally enjoys her dream while Sir Strillers secretly watches the performance; touched, he reinstates Porter and allows Sally back to the ward, where the children stay up late. Tom reveals that his only dream would have been to spend more time with his parents.

The next morning, Strillers visits the ward and discovers Matron just waking up; he demotes her to cleaner of toilets and promotes Porter to manager of the children’s ward and Doctor of Fun. Tom’s parents, phoned by Sally, arrive. After learning that Mr. Thews destroyed their letters, Tom’s parents decide that Tom will not return to St. Willet’s. Tom happily leaves with them, promising to visit Sally.