Sometimes you see this in older novels (pre 1900).
OK. In any case strike the word “currently” from rowrrbazzle’s post.
I always pictured him as an accountant but I guess moneylender makes more sense.
In the Albert Finney version, he’s definitely a moneylender (or loanshark, even). On his way home from on Christmas Eve, he stops by several stands (including Tom Jenkins’, the hot soup man, who later sings, “Thank you very much…”) and demands payment. Jenkins offers hot soup for every day of the next year in exchange for being given another two weeks to pay what’s due.
I take issue with the money-lending consensus. There is little suggestion in the original story that Scrooge deals with the general public as would a pawn-broker or loan shark. His “trade” probably invovles granting credit to other businesses, but this doesn’t make him a “money lender” any more than we would describe a wholesale business today, with a credit manager, as a “money lender”.
No doubt the money lender theme has crept into many adaptations, but that’s because it’s an easy stereotype for a greedy grasping business person. It is not present in the original. Scrooge is simply “in trade”; in modern terms, he is a humorless workaholic. The nature of the trade isn’t important.
I agree-Scrooge & Marley was probably a credit/short-term financing operation. There was no warehouse, so Scrooge didn’t deal in goods-plus he had only a single clerk. I forget the source (either the book ofr the GCS movie version), but Scrooge did deal with merchants (either financing their debt or bying their receivables).
So, in his business , he wold have known a lot of people-which is why Dickens emphasiszed his social isolation (nobdy wanted to attend the funeral, unless lunch was included).
He has a counting house, where his money is counted. He has his own accountant(Bob) that makes sure very penny is accounted for.
We even see a happy couple who learn Scrooge is dead…knowing that they won’t have to pay him back now.
Oh, man. You gotta see it. It’s the only version of A Christmas Carol worth watching. Well, also Kelsey Grammer’s version, but only so you can ogle the smokin’ hot Jane Krakowski as the Ghost of Christmas Past. Actually, here - watch this clip and save yourself the horror of the rest of that show.
What do you mean, there was no warehouse? From the story, “Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names: it was all the same to him.”
Emphasis added. Perhaps warehouse meant something different than it does today, but the story indicates a warehouse.
Agreed. The best parts of this version are Frank Finlay as Marley, Scott, and Edward Woodward as Christmas Present.
Acutally, now I’m curious, how did Scrooge McDuck make his money? Was that ever addressed?
Addressed by who? I don’t think there is a truly canonical source for the Duck-universe.
That said, Don Rosa cover the subject pretty well in his The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. Essentially Scrooge McDuck’s first major success was during the Klondike gold rush and using the (not insignificant amount of) money he made there he traveled around the world starting businesses. Selling freezers on Greenland, lawnmowers in Sahara, that sort of things. 
Here’s the scene about the debt:
It doesn’t really explain what kind of debt they are in to Scrooge.
I think the Finney version probably is the best at explaining him: he makes high interest loans and invests the proceeds in the markets. Cratchit’s job is probably figuring the cash on hand and the proceeds from investments while Scrooge handles the lending and collecting.
[hijack]I met Don Rosa when I lived in Louisville in the mid-70s. He hung out at a small used bookstore, and I was in my mid-teens at the time. He and I weren’t friends, but we chatted at the bookstore, and there’s no way he’d remember me after 35 years, so I say this more as a “brush with greatness” story. [/hijack]
Oliver Twist contains a reference to a “fried fish warehouse” which sold portions of hot battered fish to the general public. cite
It would appear that Dickens sometimes used “warehouse” to mean “shop”
I don’t know about only ogling her. She’s easy on the eyes, to be sure, but even easier on the ears. Her voice somehow reminds me of Julie Andrews.
Maybe - it could also have been a standard warehouse for fresh fish that set up a fry stand out front to get a little extra cash from the local dock workers.
Dictionary.com lists "*British . a large retail store," as a definition for the term “warehouse,” which I take to mean things like Best Buy. Hard to imagine a shop on that scale only selling fish and chips, though, so I assume that wasn’t the specific usage Dickens had in mind.
[sub]*Heh.[/sub]
I have and still use it occasionally.
“Sweetcorn” is the term I’ve encountered in the UK. I think it’s used here occasionally by farmers to differentiate it from feed corn that’s used as animal fodder, but it’s not a term you’d see on a menu or use casually. A sign at the vegetable stand might say “sweet corn” but I take that as the same construction as “fresh peaches.”. Of course at a real vegetable stand, the sign will read
and
Could they be a small accounting firm?
It might fit.