News about John Elwes

However, if Ebenezer Scrooge is a supreme work of literary imagination, what's less well known is that the character was inspired in real life. John Elwes was a man who made Charles Dickens' creation look like something like a child. Elwes, an 18th-century landowner, property developer, and a former Member of Parliament, was known in his own right, as a heralded skinflint whose penny-pinching made him a symbol of national fascination and mockery. For example, the Elwes decided not to clean his shoes in case it made them out faster. He so disliked buying food that he once took a half-eaten moorhen off a pond that had been pulled out from a pond. He wore ragged clothes, including an old wig he discovered in a hedge. Candles were an extravagance, and if anyone was brave enough to visit, they'd have to share a fire made from a single stick and occasionally make do with a glass of wine between two people.