John Elwes

Family background and early life

Elwes (birth name "Meggot") was born on 7 April 1714 to Robert Meggot, a Southwark brewer (grandson of Sir George Meggot, MP for that same borough), and Amy, daughter of Gervase Elwes, MP for Sudbury, Suffolk, and granddaughter of Sir Gervase Elwes, 1st Baronet, MP for Suffolk (see Elwes baronets). His maternal grandmother, Lady Isabella Hervey, was also well-known as a miser.

He received an education in the classics at Westminster School. After leaving, he travelled to Geneva where he embraced his skill for horsemanship and hunting. He was known as one of the best riders in Europe. It was at this time that he was introduced to Voltaire, to whom he was reported to bear a remarkable resemblance. However, Elwes was far more impressed with the quality of the horses at his riding school than by the genius of the French philosopher.

First inheritance

Elwes inherited his first fortune from his father who died in 1718 when Elwes was just four years old. Although his mother was left £100,000 in the will (equivalent to £18,900,000 in 2025), she reputedly starved herself to death because she was too cheap to spend it. With her death, he inherited the family estate including Marcham Park at Marcham in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), purchased by his father in 1717.

Second inheritance

The greatest influence on Elwes' life was his miserly uncle, Sir Hervey Elwes, 2nd Baronet, of Stoke College and MP for Sudbury, whom Elwes obsequiously imitated to gain favour. Sir Hervey prided himself on only spending little more than £110 on himself per annum. The two of them often spent the evening railing against other people's extravagances while they shared a single glass of wine. In 1751, in order to inherit his uncle's estate, he changed his name from Meggot to Elwes. Sir Hervey died on 18 September 1763, bequeathing his entire fortune to his nephew. The net worth of the estate was more than £250,000 (equivalent to £42,900,000 in 2025), a figure that continued to grow despite Elwes' inept handling of his finances.

Miserliness

On assuming his uncle's fortune, however, Elwes also adopted his uncle's miserly ways. He went to bed when darkness fell so as to save on candles. He began wearing only ragged clothes, including a beggar's cast-off wig he found in a hedge and wore for two weeks. His old clothes were so dilapidated that many mistook him for a common street beggar, and would put a penny into his hand as they passed. To avoid paying for a coach he would walk in the rain, and then sit in wet clothes to save the cost of a fire to dry them. His house was full of expensive furniture but also mouldering food. He would eat putrefied game before allowing new food to be bought. On one occasion, it was said that he ate a moorhen that a rat had pulled from a river.

Rather than spend the money for repairs he allowed his spacious country mansion to become uninhabitable. A near relative once stayed at his home in the country, but the bedroom was in such a poor state that the relative was awakened in the night by rain pouring on him through the roof. After searching in vain for a bell, the relative was forced to move his bed several times, until he found a place where he could remain dry. On remarking the circumstance to Elwes in the morning, the latter said: "Ay! I don't mind it myself... that is a nice corner in the rain!" His biographer, Edward Topham, who knew him well, recounted:

"it is curious to remark, how he contrived to mingle small attempts at saving.... After sitting up a whole night at play for thousands, with the most fashionable and profligate men of the time, amidst splendid rooms, gilt sofas, wax lights, and waiters attendant on his call, he would walk out about four in the morning, not towards home, but into Smithfield! to meet his own cattle, which were coming to market from Theydon-hall, a farm of his in Essex. There would this same man, forgetful of the scenes he had just left, stand in the cold or rain, bartering with a carcass butcher for a shilling."

According to author William Haig Miller, Elwes "complained bitterly of the birds robbing him of so much hay with which to build their nests." Even Elwes' health was limited by expense. In common with many misers, he distrusted physicians, preferring to treat himself in order to save paying for one. He once badly cut both legs while walking home in the dark, but would only allow the apothecary to treat one, wagering his fee that the untreated limb would heal first. Elwes won by a fortnight and the doctor had to forfeit his fee. He also bore a wound from a hunting accident. Legend has it that one day he was out shooting with a gentleman who was a particularly bad shot. This same man accidentally fired through a hedge, lodging several shot in the miser's cheek. With great embarrassment and concern, the gentleman approached Elwes to apologize, but Elwes, anticipating the apology, held out his hand, and said: "My dear sir, I congratulate you on improving; I thought you would hit something in time".

Political career

In 1772, with the help of Lord Craven he became a Member of Parliament for Berkshire (his election expenses amounted to a mere eighteen pence). He entered the House of Commons in a by-election as a compromise candidate to replace Thomas Craven, which began the first of three terms. He held his seat unopposed until he stood down at the 1784 election. Elwes sat with either party according to his whim, and he never once rose to address the House of Commons. Fellow members mockingly observed that since he possessed only one suit, they could never accuse him of being a "turncoat". Being a member of parliament did, however, cause Elwes to frequently travel to Westminster. He made the journey on a poor lean horse, the route chosen being always the one whereby he could avoid turnpike tolls. He was known to put a hard-boiled egg in his pocket, and midway on his journey would sit under some hedge and eat his egg or sleep. After twelve years, he retired rather than face the prospect of laying out any money to retain his seat.

Moneylending

Despite his exceptional frugality, Elwes lost huge sums of money to his colleagues in unrepaid loans, uncollected debts and dubious investments. He believed that one did not ask a gentleman for money, regardless of the circumstances. On one notable occasion Elwes, unsolicited, lent Lord Abingdon £7,000 to enable him to place a bet at Newmarket Racecourse. On the day of the race, Elwes rode on horseback to the racetrack with nothing to eat for fourteen hours save a piece of pancake which he had put into his pocket two months earlier and which he swore to a startled companion was "as good as new".

Later years

After his parliamentary career ended, Elwes devoted his full energies to being a miser as he moved about among his many properties. At his neglected estates he continued to forbid repairs, joined his tenants in postharvest gleaning, and sat with his servants in the kitchen to save the cost of a fire elsewhere. Even on the coldest day of winter he was known to sit fireless at his meals, saying that eating was "exercise enough" to keep him warm. If a stableboy put out hay for a visitor's horse, Elwes would sneak out and remove it. In his last years, he had no fixed abode and frequently shifted his residence between his unrented London properties in the neighbourhood of Marylebone, seeking out the ones that were temporarily unoccupied. A couple of beds, a couple of chairs, a table, and an "old woman" (housekeeper) were said to be all his furnishings. This same housekeeper was known to frequently catch colds because there were never any fires and often no glass in the windows.

This practice nearly cost Elwes his life when he fell desperately ill in one of these houses and no one could find him. Only by chance was he rescued. His nephew, Colonel Timms, who wanted to see him, inquired in vain at Elwes's bankers and at other places. A pot boy recollected having seen an "old beggar" go into a stable at one of Elwes's uninhabited houses in Great Marlborough Street and lock the door behind him. Timms knocked at the door, but when no one answered, sent for a blacksmith and had the lock forced. According to Edward Walford in Volume 4 of his Old and New London (1878):

"In the lower part (of the house) all was shut and silent, but on ascending the stairs they heard the moans of a person seemingly in distress. They went to the chamber, and there on an old pallet bed they found Mr. Elwes, apparently in the agonies of death. For some time he seemed quite insensible."

He remained in this condition until some "cordials" could be administered by a neighbouring apothecary. After he had sufficiently recovered, Elwes stated that he believed he had been ill for "two or three days" and that there was an "old woman" in the house, but that for some reason or other, she had "not been near him"; that she had "been ill herself", but that he supposed she must have "recovered" and "gone away". Upon searching the premises, however, Timms and the apothecary found the woman stretched lifeless on the floor, having apparently been dead for two days.

In literature

The first account of Elwes' life was Edward Topham's The Life of the Late John Elwes: Esquire (1790), which was initially published in his paper The World. The popularity of this account is attested by the seven editions printed in the book's first year and the many later reprintings under various titles. The compendium Biographical Curiosities (1797, by James Ridgway) also included Elwes.

Elwes is believed to have inspired William Harrison Ainsworth to create the character of John Scarfe in his novel The Miser's Daughter (1842).

Ebenezer Scrooge may have been partly based on Elwes. Charles Dickens made reference to Elwes in Bleak House (1853)—along with another notable 18th-century miser, Daniel Dancer—and some years later in his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend (1865).