Scrooge and Marley

"Mr. Marley died seven years ago, this very night."

- Scrooge anouncing his partner's past dead to two solicitors.

Plot
In life, Jacob Marley was Ebenezer Scrooge's partner. As teenagers, both of them had been apprenticed in business and met as clerks in another business. The firm of Scrooge and Marley was this evil lair; a style-nineteenth-century financial institution counting house to which Marley refers as 'their money-changing hole'. They became successful yet hard-hearted bankers, with seats on the London Stock Exchange. In spite of this Scrooge showed little to no remorse of Marley's death. He was named after Marley Tunnel in Devon, just outside Totnes because of Dickens' fond holiday memories of the town.

Jacob Marley died on December 24, 1836, on Christmas Eve. Seven years later, on Christmas Eve 1843, his ghost would be Scrooge's first visitor (before the three other spirits to come). Scrooge was described as Marley's "sole friend" and "sole mourner", and praises Marley as being a good friend to him.

Jacob Marley preyed upon Scrooge's mind in many different ways, notably his face manifesting on the knocker on Ebenezer Scrooge's front door and causing the bells in his house to ring. The ghost maintained the same voice, hairstyle and sense of dress that he had in life, but was translucent. He weared a handkerchief tied about his jaws, and "captive, bound and double-ironed" with chains which was described as "long, and wound about him like a tail; it was made... of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel." He often, in moments of great despair or impatience at Scrooge's scepticism, flinged these upon the ground before him and almost induced his former partner "into a swoon". He explained that it was the chain he unknowingly had forged himself in life, as a result of his greed and selfishness. As he had spent his life on this earth obsessing over money and mistreating the poor and wretched to fill his pocket, Marley was condemned to walk the earth for eternity never to find rest or peace, experiencing an "incessant torture of remorse", lamenting that Christmas is the time he suffers most of all.

When the spectre asked, "Why do you doubt your senses?" Scrooge scoffed that "...a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheat. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more gravy than grave about you, whatever you are!" Marley's only replied is a spine-chilling howl that brought Scrooge to his knees, begging for mercy.

Marley told Scrooge that he would be visited by three spirits, and admonished his former partner to listen to what they had to say, or Scrooge would suffer Marley's fate; he said that Scrooge's chain was as heavy as his seven years earlier, and remarks that "you have laboured on it since — it is a ponderous chain!". Even though it is unknown why it took seven years for Marley to haunt Scrooge, it could be implied that Scrooge could have died that very night if he was not haunted. This is evident in the fact that Marley seems to be aware that Scrooge was very close to suffering the same fate as him. Thus, Marley was given a chance to save his only friend's life before it was too late.

Marley then departed into the night sky, surrounded by a countless horde of other tormented spirits, some of whom were known to Scrooge when they were alive, all of them chained in a similar manner to Marley and suffering the same unbearable torment, as they struggled in vain to make up for their wasted lives by attempting to help a homeless mother and baby.