<P> The story of A Christmas Carol starts on Christmas Eve 1843 with Scrooge at his money - lending business . He despises Christmas as a "humbug" and subjects his clerk, Bob Cratchit, to grueling hours and low pay of only 15 shillings on a normal week (giving him Christmas Day off with pay, begrudgingly and considering it like being pickpocketed, solely due to social custom). He shows his cold - heartedness toward others by refusing to make a monetary donation for the good of the poor, claiming that the prisons and workhouses are sufficient, and if not they are better off dead, thereby "decreasing the surplus population ." </P> <P> While he is preparing to go to bed, he is visited by the ghost of his business partner, Jacob Marley, who had died seven years earlier (1836) on Christmas Eve . Like Scrooge, Marley had spent his life hoarding his wealth and exploiting the poor, and, as a result, is damned to walk the Earth for eternity bound in the chains of his own greed . Marley warns Scrooge that he risks meeting the same fate and that as a final chance at redemption he will be visited by three spirits of Christmas: Past, Present and Yet - to - Come . </P> <P> The Ghost of Christmas Past takes Scrooge to see his time as a schoolboy and young man, during the late 18th and early 19th centuries . These visions reveal that Scrooge was a lonely child whose unloving father sent him away to a boarding school . His one solace was his beloved sister, Fan, who repeatedly begged their father to allow Scrooge to return home, and he at last relented . Fan later died after having given birth to one child, a son named Fred, Scrooge's nephew . The spirit then takes him to see another Christmas a few years later in which he enjoyed a Christmas party held by his kind - hearted and festive boss, Mr. Fezziwig . It is there that he meets his love and later fiancée, Belle . Then the spirit shows him a Christmas in which Belle leaves him, as she realizes his love for money has replaced his love for her . Finally, the spirit shows him a Christmas Eve several years later, in which Belle is happily married to another man . </P> <P> Scrooge is then visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present, who shows him the whole of London celebrating Christmas, including Fred and the impoverished Cratchit family . Scrooge is both bewildered and touched by the loving and pure - hearted nature of Cratchit's youngest son, Tiny Tim . When Scrooge shows concern for the sickly boy's health, the spirit informs him that the boy will die unless something changes, a revelation that deeply disturbs Scrooge . The spirit then uses Scrooge's earlier words about "decreasing the surplus population" against him . The spirit takes him to a spooky graveyard . There, the spirit produces two misshapen, sickly children he names Ignorance and Want . When Scrooge asks if they have anyone to care for them, the spirit throws more of Scrooge's own words back in his face: "Are there no prisons, no workhouses?" </P>

What was the name of scrooge's true love