Dickens' plot has a lesson

WITH reference to Cath Davis' letter (Tuesday) in Dickens' A Christmas Carol the two images of Want and Ignorance hidden under the cloak of the Ghost of Christmas Present was a message to Scrooge to recognise his meanness of spirit and greed.

- Maureen Taylor-Gooby, Peterlee

Scrooge was an unscrupulous employer who paid Cratchit a pittance, so it was because of Scrooge's greed that Cratchit was so poor.

Dickens had visited tin mines in Cornwall with his friends and had seen the poverty of those who laboured in the "bowels of the earth" whilst providing wealth, not for the workers, but for the mine owners, so he mentions the miners in A Christmas Carol.