List of Minor Blackadder Characters - Mrs. Scratchit

Mrs. Scratchit

Mrs. Scratchit (Pauline Melville) is a woman who appears in Blackadder's Christmas Carol. While seemingly a weak and sweet-natured woman, she is actually a very greedy con artist who has a "crippled" son called Tiny Tom, who is, in fact, morbidly obese (weighing fifteen stone and is "built like a brick privy".) She starts off swindling £17 off Blackadder in return for 17 matchsticks, claiming it is needed to feed herself and her family, claiming they are too poor to afford any meals, apart from "what Grandfather can scrape from under his big toenail." She returns later on, after Blackadder's epiphany, in the hope of swindling him further, asking if he has a present for her, or has "found me a little fowl for Tiny Tom's Christmas." She is stunned when Blackadder coldly responds "I've always found you foul, Mrs. Scratchit, and more than a little." He also reveals that Tiny Tom is feigning his "disability", saying that "occasionally saying "phew, my leg hurts" when he remembers to wouldn't fool Baldrick" (although Baldrick remarks that "it did, actually"). He then takes back the money she took from him in return for a pail of manure, and suggests she use Tiny Tom as a houseboat, sending her out, crying. She is no doubt based on the character of Mrs. Cratchit, the wife of Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol, although much more conniving and malicious.