Ebenezer Scrooge: Edinburgh businessman who inspired Charles Dickens' famous character may have been little more than a ghost – Susan Morrison

Kirkcaldy-born Ebenezer Scroggie was said to have been a generous businessman, but was he every bit as fictional as the Charles Dickens’ character?

In 1841, the city of Edinburgh threw a lavish dinner for the best-selling author Charles Dickens. The Courant recorded that, late in the evening, Mr Fletcher rose to announce he would make the shortest speech of the night. He commended Dickens, that “most peculiarly English man” for having the good sense to take as a “partner for life, a Scottish lady”. The Courant reports “great cheering”, as you can imagine.

Dickens owed not only his wife to Scotland, but also a significant part of his career. Catherine Hogarth had been born in Edinburgh in 1815. Her father George Hogarth was a lawyer-turned-journalist who moved the whole family to London when he became the music critic for the Morning Chronicle. Here he met the rising cub reporter, Charles Dickens.

He invited him home. Catherine met Charles. They began courting. Of course, they could not be left alone. Such an impropriety. Until they were married, Catherine and Charles were chaperoned by Mary Hogarth, her younger sister, also born in Edinburgh, two years after Catherine.

Dickens’ virtuous teenage heroines

The marriage started out happily, and Dickens adored his beautiful and vivacious sister-in-law. She even moved in with the young couple. Charles loved being seen around town with a sister on each arm, as they did the night of May 7, 1837, to see the play “Is She His Wife?”

Shockingly, within hours of returning from the theatre Mary collapsed and died. Dickens was distraught and wrote the epitaph for her gravestone. Mary, he wrote, was “young, beautiful, and good, God numbered her among his angels at the early age of seventeen".

She remained forever in his mind as that angelic girl. Mary Hogarth’s ghost haunted Dickens' work. Virtuous teenage heroines feature in so many of his novels. Dora Spenlow, Little Nell, Esther Summerson and Amy Dorrit, all versions of the lost and forever youthful Mary Hogarth.

The character of Ebenezer Scrooge, as depicted by Tommy Steele here, was supposedly based on a name on an Edinburgh gravestone (Picture: MJ Kim/Getty Images)

The living sister did not fare so well. Naturally, Catherine aged. And there were a lot of children. Ten in all. This near-constant state of pregnancy wreaked havoc with Catherine's health, both physical and mental, and she seems to have suffered from what we would know as postnatal depression.

He had to work ever harder to support this growing family, which, oddly, he seemed to think was all Catherine’s fault. He loved his children, but eventually he cruelly spurned Catherine. He began an affair with Ellen Ternan, darling of the stage, beautiful, talented. And just 18.

The birth of Scrooge

Big families cost a lot of money, and Charles was a spender. In 1848, he hit on the idea of a Christmas blockbuster. At its heart he placed a character who is probably his most famous creation, inspired, it is claimed, by the misreading of an Edinburgh tombstone.

A Christmas Carol is probably Dickens' best-known novel. It's a global phenomenon, constantly in print. Versions appear constantly on stage, film, television and dance. Even the Muppets have adapted the ‘Carol’, but have left Bleak House alone. It's easy to see why. It's just the right side of scary, warm-hearted and has a happy ending, especially for Tiny Tim.

In the middle of all the ghostly mayhem, Ebenezer Scrooge sits, stands, flies and dances, and is ultimately saved. He’s been played by Patrick Stewart, Alastair Sim, Tim Curry and Michael Caine. None of them used a Scottish accent for the role. They could have, if Ebenezer’s origin story is true.

It is said that when Dickens came to Edinburgh in 1842, he took a walk through the Canongate kirkyard. There he saw a gravestone to “Ebenezer Scroggie – Meal Man”, which Dickens misread as “Mean Man”. The horrible description shocked Dickens, but gave him the name and character of Ebenezer Scrooge, the grasping, cold-hearted miser.

A Christmas mystery

It was a terrible thing to do to the real Ebenezer. Various accounts tell us this Kirkcaldy lad, born in 1792, was an open-handed, generous businessman. A cousin to the father of economics, Adam Smith. He was a bit of a wild lad. He apparently brought the General Assembly of the Kirk to a screeching halt when he groped a countess.

Jacob Marley would have admired his business acumen. In 1822 he won a contract to supply the Royal Navy with whisky. He was big in local politics and was said to have become acting provost for Andew Wedderburn in 1832.

He died in 1836, a good, eventful life traduced by the greatest novelist of the age. Perhaps it's time to redeem his name. But if you go looking for Mr Scroggie, you’ll discover he’s a hard man to find.

The name Scroggie is missing from Kirkcaldy’s birth records, although 1792 records are patchy. The claim that he was the son of Adam Smith’s niece seems odd. The author of the Wealth of Nations was an only child.

The groping incident at the General Assembly doesn’t seem to have been noted by the Moderator. Or anyone else for that matter. They might have noticed a countess. Women rarely appeared in that masculine world.

A merchant as prominent as Ebenezer would have been mentioned in the Leith and Edinburgh Post Office directories, but no Mr Scroggie is listed. The demise of this wealthy man would have featured in the newspapers’ death notices. Once again, no Mr Scroggie. This was a man said to be so prominent in local politics that he became acting provost for Alexander Wedderburn, which is interesting because the provosts at the time were actually John Learmonth and Sir James Spittal.

There is a Scroggie buried in St Cuthbert’s, but his name was James and he was a gardener. He died of fever in 1796. So was there really an Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie? Well, that’s a Christmas mystery Dickens would have loved.