When the last of the spirits, the Ghost of the Future, appears to Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol," he takes the old miser to "a low-browed, beetling shop" in a terrible quarter of London that "reeked with crime, with filth, and misery." There sits an old "rascal" of nearly seventy, smoking a pipe near a stove behind a tattered curtain. Into this place come a charwoman, a laundress, and a man in faded black. When they encounter one another, they burst into laughter.
These people are the jackals of society, for they have plundered what things they could obtain from the house of the dead Scrooge. The charwoman has even taken the curtains--to the amazement of even the vile Joe--from his bedroom and stolen the very shirt from Scrooge's back, showing absolutely no respect for the dead. In fact, Mrs. Dilber laughs at the thought of their stealing in this manner from Scrooge. The charwoman scoffs,
'If he wanted to keep 'em after he was dead, a wicked old screw,...why wasn't he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he'd have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself.'
To this remark, Mrs. Diber agrees,
'It's the truest word that ever was spoke...It's a judgment on him.
Old Joe chalks the sums of what he owes them onto his wall. These acts of the unconscionable people is somewhat suggestive of those who barter over the robe of Jesus, solitary and betrayed by Peter, as He was led to his crucifixion. So, perhaps, Scrooge realizes how greatly he is despised when even the lowest of London society laugh at him and desecrate his corpse, carrying his final belongings to a filthy, disreputable rag shop.
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