HOW delighted I was to learn that a couple – described as travellers – ‘brutally manipulated and exploited destitute men’, have received substantial jail sentences.

This must not, however, be dismissed as an isolated occurrence.

While conceding that my acquaintances do not necessarily entirely represent a cross-section of the population at large, I have known two chaps – one a very severe schizophrenic, the other ‘with learning difficulties’ – who have sadly found themselves in similar deplorable situations.

The latter at one stage managed to escape briefly to a certain other major university city, but was ‘recaptured’ and brought back here, probably incurring severe penalties.

I was once approached, while sitting on a bench in St Aldate’s, and offered the prospect of mucking out a stable.

This was never precisely my chief professional aspiration.

The potential employer had supposedly been given rather inaccurate information concerning my background.

Nearby workmen indicated that I was by no means the first.

They also very much doubted that I would be paid, though this was entirely academic in my care, as was made abundantly clear to all concerned.

I considered referring the matter to the police, but they presumably would have responded – absolutely truthfully, as always – that there had been no criminal offence.

DAVID DIMENT, Riverside Court, Oxford