The strange case of Charles Dickens and a disappearing Edinburgh gravestone
In search of the truth about the inspiration behind Ebenezer Scrooge
The well-dressed man – one might almost say a Dandy – moved quietly through the kirkyard at Canongate. He seemed a man alone with his thoughts, and happy to be so. A man comfortable with such moments of solitude.
He habitually enjoyed long evening walks, a chance to clear his head and simply think. It was a dry summer evening in Edinburgh, and he paused at a gravestone.
No surprise he might see something of interest – after all, some of Edinburgh’s most famous had been laid to rest among these graves – the economist Adam Smith, Robert Fergusson the poet, Lord Provost and school pioneer Sir William Fettes, even back to the murdered David Rizzio, servant of Mary, Queen of Scots, brutally done in by the jealousy of Darnley and his accomplices in the nearby Palace of Holyroodhouse in 1566.
The Dandy stroked his chin - he had not yet grown the famed “door knocker” beard he sported later in life - engrossed for a few moments. He appeared to make a quick note before moving on, a smile playing on his lips.
It was 1841, and the man in question was one of the great writers and speakers of his age, a man renowned both for his wit and his championing of social causes. Charles Dickens, perhaps the greatest writer of the Victorian age, was enjoying a successful trip to Scotland’s Capital, a city he enjoyed immensely, not least because he had married a Scots woman from an eminent family.
He wrote to his close friend, and later biographer, John Forster saying he had decided to visit Edinburgh in response to “a desire in that romantic town to give me greeting and welcome.” The trip was to include a hugely successful and sell-out public dinner and speech – Dickens was regarded as one of the wittiest after-dinner speakers of his time. He knew the worth of wit as he pursued one of his primary goals in life – using his talent as a writer and speaker to achieve social reform and tackle child poverty.
The event, he confided to Forster, was “the most brilliant affair you can conceive; the completest success possible, from first to last. The room was crammed, and more than seventy applicants for tickets were of necessity refused yesterday (..) I think (ahem!) that I spoke rather well.”
Honour and inspiration
On the last day of June, the council awarded Dickens the Freedom of the City and the scroll was to hang on his study wall till the end of his life. It was a treasured possession. But it wasn’t the most valuable thing he took home from Edinburgh that summer.
That title belonged to … a name from a misread tombstone, and the germ of an idea that was to change Christmas forever. The name, we are told, was Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie. It may sound familiar…
Scroggie’s tombstone bore the inscription “A meal man” – which in truth described his vocation, he had been a corn merchant most of his life. But in the evening light it appears Dickens misread the inscription as “A mean man.” It is said that he wrote in his personal notebook that “to be remembered through eternity only for being mean seemed the greatest testament to a life wasted.”
Or did he? Was Scroggie a real person at all? Doubts have been cast in recent days on the veracity of this 20-years-old twist to a Victorian tale that is still adored around the world. More of those questions later, for now let us return to our story.
While a seed may have been planted in the Canongate, it would not grow to fruition until 1843, when the political landscape was fertile. Dickens was disheartened with politics, especially the lack of progress in tackling child poverty. In early 1843, parliament was presented with a report on the extent of child labour in the country. It made for desperate reading, children as young as seven working long hours in coal mines and in other back-breaking and dangerous occupations.
It outraged Dickens, who identified strongly. As his father’s middle-class finances had collapsed, at the tender age of 12 he had been forced to work appalling conditions in the notorious Warren’s shoe polish factory in London to help make ends meet. The experience helped form his liberal views.
The abandoned protest pamphlet
Dickens was determined to write a worthy pamphlet of protest, which he planned on calling, “An Appeal to the People of England on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child” but soon abandoned the idea in favour of writing something with “twenty-thousand times the force.” Within six weeks of starting, he had written a novella. “A Christmas Carol” was first published in London by Chapman & Hall, illustrated by John Leech in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
It’s main protagonist was the mean and miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, who’s dislike of all things Christmas and joyless existence is transformed when, on Christmas Eve, he is visited by the three ghosts of Christmas - Past, Present and those yet to come.
In his foreword, he described it thus: “I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me.”
The story is told with typical warmth and gentle humour, but it’s anti-poverty message and plea for greater kindness to children is front and centre. Think of the ghost of Christmas Present, parting his robe to reveal two ragged urchins clinging to him, and answering Scrooge’s fearful question as to who they are:
“They are Man’s! This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”
This ”Ghost of an Idea” took the nation by storm, and raised awareness of the issue of child poverty and began to change attitudes towards it.
Fun-loving, jovial and generous
But what of the “meal man” whose name was a part of the inspiration for the story? Who was the Edinburgh corn merchant (and vintner) Dickens mistook as being remembered “only for being mean,” and what kind of a person was he?
At first glance, the real Ebenezer seems closer to Santa Claus in character than Dickens’ miser. Scroggie was fun-loving, jovial and could be generous. But in truth, he was no saint (Nicholas or otherwise) – though he was certainly far removed from the tight-fisted and mean-spirited Scrooge.
He was a relative, most probably great-nephew or perhaps a cousin, of Adam Smith, whose grave Dickens had visited at Canongate before he spied the nearby Scroggie headstone. Nor was Dickens the first literary genius with whom he had dealt, albeit from beyond the grave in this case.
Years earlier Sir Walter Scott, the great Scottish author of his era, had been tasked with overseeing the visit of King George IV to Edinburgh in 1822, the first British monarch to visit the city since the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
Scroggie, who had the contract to help supply rum to the Royal Navy at Leith, demonstrated considerable form in event management, being renowned for the lavish parties and events he catered. This experience prompted Scott to be satisfied that Scroggie could be the main alcohol supplier for an extraordinary programme of events which would include galas, balls and dinners.
Ebenezer helped plan the Peers Ball in Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms on 23rd August 1822, regarded as the event which changed society’s view of tartan – making it not only respectable once more but positively fashionable.
He was also a Bailie of the city council, and as such was a person of some standing. But Scroggie’s personal reputation was, if not tarnished, then certainly unvarnished. Unlike Scrooge his greatest sin was not being too parsimonious, but too lascivious.
It is said that he once pinched the bottom of an aristocratic lady during a worthy but dull debate at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, bringing proceedings to a halt, and he attracted the ire of the Kirk for having a child out of wedlock – and to a servant!
But, again, did he? Did he do all of these things, or any of them? Indeed, did the aforesaid “meal man” exist at all. In an article in recent days The Scotsman has certainly raised doubts about the tale - having been one of the earliest, if not the earliest, tellers of the story in 2004 when the colourful, if not downright eccentric, political economist and journalist Peter Clarke first made the claims after conducting his own research.
Mr Clarke passed some years ago, and so his testimony cannot be obtained.
The Scotsman’s case for the prosecution went thus: “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.”(Inquirer insert: He did have a half-brother, Hugh, by his father’s earlier marriage.)
“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.”
They have a point. Putting hands on real, hard evidence is a thankless task. Yet many have been convinced. Scroggie’s tale is included in walking tours; a charity reading of the novella featuring well known Scottish authors has taken place in the graveyard with the blessing of the Church to mark its association; features in numerous websites, and the story has even been recounted on the website of the Adam Smith Institute.
Indeed, the well-established Mercat Tours tell us of the appeal on their website: “Today visitors from all over the world come to visit the site of Ebenezer Scroggie in the Canongate Kirkyard, but alas they are always disappointed as unfortunately his gravestone was lost during some redevelopment during the 1930’s , but we always like to think he is there in spirit, having a chuckle at one of the greatest misunderstandings in literary history.”
Rev Neil Gardner, Minister at Canongate, isn’t letting on which side of the fence he sits on, but admits that there is nothing to back up the story of Scroggie’s gravestone within the kirk records, then impishly adds: “ But then again , the skating minister painted by Raeburn, the Rev Robert Walker, is also said to be buried in the graveyard at Canongate but there is no stone, and nothing I know of in the records. These things happen, don’t they?
“In any event, the story of Scroggie has been a very useful one for me, when talking of the vices and virtues of meanness and generosity. And after all, it is a marvellous story.”
Was Scroggie real, if perhaps more than a little embellished? Perhaps he is simply proof of the point Winston Churchill made that “A lie travels halfway round the world before truth gets its pants on.” But even if one inclines to the latter, the brilliance of the invention must be admired given it is now widely quoted, having been retold over the past twenty years in several leading newspapers including The Scotsman (more than once), The Times, The Herald and others around the globe. Use AI to search online and the bot will confidently inform you all about the real Ebenezer Scroggie.
Lost gravestone and unexpected legacy
Scroggie, if he lived, died in his mid-40s in 1836. His gravestone, if it ever existed, was sadly, in the light of doubts raised, allegedly lost during work at the Church and graveyard in the 1930s. Lordy, this is getting confusing. Yet he lives on, for eternity it would seem, in this digital age.
The name Ebenezer had been both popular and respectable until the publication of Dickens’ novella – then entirely lost its appeal due its association with mean-spiritedness.
More importantly what of the legacy the Dickens left us through this much-loved story, which has now been enjoyed by countless millions in print, film and on stage. Think especially of the classic 1951 movie, starring Edinburgh-born actor Alistair Sim as “the real” Scrooge in a performance still regarded as definitive. Is it all just so much Bah Humbug?
We think not. Christmas was reinvented in this Victorian era, even down to the decorated Christmas tree. The best of the qualities it encourages – hope, redemption, kindness, generosity and goodwill – all owe much to Dickens and, let’s say, the Edinburgh name which just may have helped inspire him. We hope so. And Dickens left us with one final festive tradition we can cherish – to wish “A Merry Christmas to Us, One and All.”