Charles Dickens gave the world its most famous cheapskate in Ebenezer Scrooge, a man who liked darkness partly because it meant not paying for a measly candle. Ghostly visitations in the novella A Christmas Carol brought redemption from his mean and penny-pinching ways, unlike the real person who is believed to have inspired this iconic scrimper.

John Elwes (1714–1789), born John Meggot, inherited enormous wealth and his stingy ways from an eccentric family. His maternal grandmother Lady Isabella Hervey was, according to her brother John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol, a miser. This hoarding attitude to money and personal discomfort passed down to her children. Her daughter Amy married a brewer, Robert Meggot, but after his death she refused to pay for food despite having no shortage of funds. She’s believed to have starved to death, after which ownership of the family home of Marcham Park in Berkshire passed to her son, John.

John wasn’t always a miser. After studying classics at Westminster School, Elwes travelled to Geneva, where he spent much time indulging his flair for horseriding and hunting. While in Switzerland he met the philosopher Voltaire, and a physical resemblance between the two men was about the only thing they had in common. Voltaire’s intellectual nature didn’t rub off on Elwes, who’d done well at school yet hadn’t read books since.

On return to England it was John’s uncle on his mother’s side – Sir Hervey Elwes (c.1683–1763) – who seems to have set him on the path of personal austerity. To convince his uncle that he was of a similar mind in frugality he would change into drab clothes before visiting. Once together, the two would rail about the extravagance of others while righteously supping a single glass of wine between them. Having convinced his uncle of his credentials in self-denial, at age 49 the nephew inherited another fortune, having previously changed his name to Elwes in 1750.

Nearly a decade later in 1772 and in his late fifties he became a Tory member of Parliament for Berkshire after contesting a by-election, spending just 18 pence on election expenses. He sat in three parliaments until stepping down in 1784 having never spoken in the House of Commons. Thanks to his singular nature, Elwes tended to vote with his conscience, even if that meant with the opposition against the government. He wasn’t tempted by money or position. Wearing the same suit all that time drew mocking attention from fellow MPs who joked that at least he couldn’t be a turncoat.

Examples of his stinginess are legion and were often foolish. One night while out walking in the dark he banged into an object, badly cutting both legs. A colonel he was staying with at the time persuaded him to call out an apothecary. Only letting one leg be treated, Elwes bet the apothecary his bill that the untreated one would heal first. His biographer and friend Edward Topham (1751–1820) claimed that Elwes once resorted to eating a moorhen which a rat had pulled out of a river, and more unpleasantly a part-digested pike.

Dickens described the fictional Scrooge vividly: ‘Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.’ But even Scrooge didn’t descend to Elwes’ extremes.

His ultra-economical ways also extended to his horse. When riding he would avoid the road and take the verge instead to reduce the need to pay for shoes on the mare. Apparently he would also steal the hay meant for a guest’s horse when he received a visitor.

For a man whose tatty clothes gave him the appearance of a vagabond rather than a rich gentleman, Elwes would have been better served if he’d possessed his fictional alter ego’s business sense, if not his misanthropic ways. Surprisingly, though Elwes went to ludicrous lengths to avoid spending money on himself, he could be generous to others in lending them money, and as a landlord with several properties he was also reasonable to the tenants.

A lack of nous made him a gullible victim of investments which saw his money disappear into the pockets of savvier and less scrupulous people, who doubtless had no reluctance in spending his money once handed over and never seen again. Like the proverbial ‘dead cert’ in a horse race which has lost many betting people money, Elwes was offered schemes supposedly low in risk and high in rewards such as tracts of land in America.

We’ve all known someone who quietly stands back when it’s time to buy a round in the pub yet always accepts a drink when offered. Elwes, despite being an ascetic at home, didn’t mind enjoying the luxury of French food and wine supplied by people whose hospitality he accepted. Ever inconsistent in money matters, as a regular visitor to a card club he lent large sums to acquaintances but considered it ungentlemanly to ask for it back, never cashing in his IOUs.

Few people have bettered Elwes in the old saying of ‘penny wise and pound foolish’. By no means the misanthrope of his fictional incarnation Scrooge, the main victim of loving money for its own sake was himself. Living miserably until the end, ironically he was concerned about dying in poverty after a life of self-imposed austerity. In his sick and deranged state he would cry out at night that he didn’t want to be robbed of his money. After death ceased his woes, his sons George and John benefited from an estate valued at several hundred thousand pounds, which today would be worth tens of millions.

The Elwes family weren’t the only misers of that era who didn’t have the excuse of being poor. Thomas Cooke (1725–1811) had the reputation of being the ‘most contemptible miser that ever lived’. While working as an inspector he met a widow who had inherited a mill. He essentially blackmailed her into marriage with the implication that should he inform the Excise of fraudulent accounting she’d be in serious trouble, and possibly be facing a prison sentence.

While Elwes accepted the hospitality of others, Cooke took his conniving to an unscrupulous level. When walking along a well-to-do residential street he would pretend to suffer a fit in the hope that someone would come to his aid and offer him wine to recover. An initial refusal of the offer would then be accepted should the good Samaritan insist. If not roaming the streets with the aim of gulling people out of wine or food, he would go in search of horse manure at night to fertilise his cabbages, or if necessary defecate over them himself. These antics earned him the nickname ‘Cabbage Cooke’.

Much of what we know about Elwes is thanks to Edward Topham’s biography published in 1815. He sums up the contradiction of Elwes well: ‘In private life, he was chiefly an enemy to himself. To others, he lent much; to himself, he denied everything. But in the pursuit of his property, or in the recovery of it, I have it not in my remembrance one unkind thing that ever was done by him.’ {