I think the picture above is one of the most disturbing scenes in ‘A Christmas Carol’. Ebenezer Scrooge is taken by the final spirit and he is shown a charwoman selling bedsheets to a pawn broker. The conversation reveals that the bedsheets, curtains and shirt have all been stolen from a dead mans bedroom. She justifies her heartless actions because of the heartless way the deceased man had behaved in life. Scrooge, it seems, fails to recognise the full significance of the scene – but the reader is left in no doubt that these......

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