• I AGREE with most of Nicholas Wood’s letter making very valid points about the very hard work and long hours nurses work and the slavery conditions of gang labour (Nurses and slave labour, June 15).

But then comparing this with the experience of “Roman agricultural slaves” of the 1st century AD, he informs us that “in order to keep them happy, [they] were given good-looking female companions, which resulted, in time, in a free supply of slaves”; via, presumably, initially sex – which may not have been consensual – with these “good-looking female companions”, followed by childbirth for which, at the time, there was no pain relief.

I would also take issue, very strongly indeed, with the term “given” in this context; women are human beings; not objects to be given or withheld.

MARGARET KING
Belsize Grove, NW3