by Ann Driver

My G. G. Grandmother Agnes Badham, of Bromyard, Hereford, married the young Doctor Richard Marley, who came from Salisbury to work in the Bromyard Workhouse and Cottage Hospital, owned by her father, Solicitor Richard Badham.

Dr. Richard Marley was the son of Dr. Miles Peter Jeffrey William Marley, a Surgeon of Cork Street, Westminster, London, who was a great friend of Charles Dickens. Dr. Marley Snr. was born in Dublin in 1798, but had come to London in 1819 to study medicine at St. George’s, London. One St. Patrick’s Day he held a Dinner Party, at which Dickens was a guest. The question of names came up, Dickens stating that he liked to use unusual names for his characters, and in some instances used the names of his friends. Dr. Marley said, “What about my name, I think it is quite unusual,” to which Dickens replied, “Your name will be in Household Words,” which was his magazine at that time. The first words of A Christmas Carol are, “MARLEY was dead, to begin with.” This amused Dr. Marley, although the man was very different from Scrooge, the character who used his name.

Charles Dickens also met and stayed with the three doctor sons of Miles Marley, when he travelled the Country observing people for the characters of his many books. Those Doctors were Dr. William Lane Marley of Cornwall and Australia, Dr. Henry Frederick Marley of Padstow, Cornwall (where Dickens wrote part of Martin Chuzzlewit) and Dr. Richard Marley, husband of Agnes Badham of Salisbury and Hereford.

There were numerous family letters from Charles Dickens to the Marley family, which the family understood were promised to The Dickens Fellowship, London and Truro Museum, Cornwall after the death of Great Aunt Enid, but since her death they have unfortunately completely disappeared.

Some notes on Christmas Carol

In Dickens day Christmas publications did not come out three to four months before the season they were meant to celebrate. A Christmas Carol appeared only just before Christmas Eve. It was sized upon with enthusiasm, and edition followed edition. Unluckily, the publisher had not exercised prudence in the “cost of production;” the profits were small, and as a consequence there is the following letter, addressed to Forster in January 1844.

Such a night as I have passed! I really believed I should never get up again until I had passed through all the horrors of a fever. I found the Carol accounts awaiting me, and they were the cause of it. The first six thousand copies show a profit of £230! and the last four will yield as much more. I had set my heart and soul upon a thousand to clear. What a wonderful thing it is that such a great success should occasion me such intolerable anxiety and disappointment! My year’s bills, unpaid, are so terrific, that all the energy and determination I can possibly exert will be required to clear me before I go abroad.