pit shaft while walking back to Coketown. He is rescued by villagers but, after professing his innocence and speaking to Rachael for the last time, he dies. Louisa and Sissy now suspect that Tom has committed the bank robbery, and simply told Stephen to loiter outside the bank in order to incriminate him. Sissy has already helped Tom escape by sending him to join Mr. Sleary's circus. Louisa and Sissy find Tom there, disguised in blackface. Gradgrind arrives and despairs, and a plan is hatched with Sleary's co-operation to get Tom to Liverpool, where he can escape abroad. The plan is temporarily foiled by the arrival of Bitzer, who hopes to obtain promotion from Bounderby by bringing Tom to justice, but Sleary arranges an ambush and Tom is taken to Liverpool where he boards ship. Bounderby punishes Mrs Sparsit for his humiliation by turning her out, but she doesn't particularly mind the dishonour. Five years later, he will die of a fit in the street, while Mr. Gradgrind, having abandoned his Utilitarian ideas and trying to make Facts "subservient to Faith, Hope and Charity", will suffer the contempt of his fellow MPs. Rachael will continue her life of honest hard work, while Stephen Blackpool will be pardoned by Mr Gradgrind. Tom will die from fever fairly near Coketown, having expressed penitence in a tear-stained letter. Louisa herself will grow old, but will never remarry and have children of her own. Louisa, showing kindness to the less fortunate and being loved by Sissy's children, will spend her life encouraging imagination and fancy in all she encounters. Major characters Mr. Gradgrind Thomas Gradgrind is the notorious school board Superintendent, who is dedicated to the pursuit of profitable enterprise. His name is now used generically to refer to someone who is hard and only concerned with cold facts and numbers, a follower of Utilitarian ideas who neglects the imagination. He soon sees the error of these beliefs however, when his children's lives fall into disarray. Mr. Bounderby Josiah Bounderby is a business associate of Mr. Gradgrind. Given to boasting about being a self-made man, he employs many of the other central characters of the novel. He has risen to a position of power and wealth from humble origins (though not as humble as he claims). He marries Mr. Gradgrind's daughter Louisa, some 30 years his junior, in what turns out to be a