Spectator competition winners: Ebenezer Scrooge asks for a loan

In Competition No. 3265, you were invited to submit a letter to a friend asking for a loan as it might have been written by a well-known character from the field of fact or fiction. John O’Byrne earns an honourable mention for his letter from Hamlet to Laertes. Equally impressive were Susan Firth, Mike Morrison, Ralph Bateman, J.C.H. Mounsey and John Megoran. But the cash prizes go to the winners, printed below, who pocket £25 each.

When, in the course of domestic events, it becomes necessary for a man so to impose on the goodwill of his fellow creature, as to request of him pecuniary succour, assistance, and augmentation, it behoves him set out sufficient reasons for such trespass. Let these facts be submitted to a candid friend:       ‘The actions of a tyrant have stopped the arteries of trade by which my prosperity is nourished.       ‘The delay, neglect and deceit of builders has magnified fourfold the expense of furnishing my family with a fit and commodious dwelling.       ‘The multiplication of my dependants and chattels, springing solely from my concern for their wellbeing, has made the heaviest demands upon my purse.       I hold this truth to be self-evident, that he who has given greatest service, merits the greatest consideration, and await your most generous reply with expectation, confidence and gratitude.  Frank Upton/Thomas Jefferson

Dear Bob, Resist the inclination to cry ‘Humbug!’ when I tell you that, by keeping Christmas every day of the year this past decade, I have considerably overextended myself in what my unreformed self would have disparaged as ‘the charitable way’. That you continue the work with the open-handed merriment inspired by the blessed Spirits, I have concealed from you a second set of ledgers detailing the increasingly parlous state of the business.