Trouble at mill

Published on 02/08/2012 00:03

William Blake’s “dark satanic mills” do not refer to industry at all (Lesley Riddoch, Perspective, 30 August) but to the churches which Blake felt not only did no good, but also did harm.

In London (“chartered streets”) he says: “How the chimney sweeper’s cry/ Every blacken’d church appals”.

The reference to “blacken’d” churches may be a moral one also. There is anger against the orphans in their charity uniforms (church), and fact that the churches condone and are in complicit in ill treatment of the poor.

Susan FG Forde

Main Street

Scotlandwell, Kinross-shire