The real Scrooge was a rounder

EDINBURGH, Scotland, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- There really was a Scrooge, or Scroogie to be exact, but Charles Dickens erred in fashioning one of literature's favorite characters after him.

Eberneezer Lennox Scroogie, an Edinburgh merchant, was reportedly a rambunctious, generous and licentious man who gave wild parties -- a far cry from Dickens' Scrooge who became an aphorism for meanness, the Scotsman said.

The story goes when Dickens was in Edinburgh to deliver a lecture in 1841, he took a walk through a cemetery.

There, in the failing light, he came upon Scoogie's grave. The tombstone identified him as a "meal man," signifying him as a corn merchant. But, Dickens, whose eyesight was failing, thought he was called "mean man."

Two years later, when starting "A Christmas Carol" he reached back for his "mean man" and called him Scrooge.