Jacob Marley's Ghost

Who is Jacob Marley? I put his character as the main topic in my book to one specific question which is... Who is Jacob Marley, business partner to Ebenezer Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas", commonly known as "A Christmas Carol", a short story written by Charles Dickens and first published in London by Chapman & Hall on 19 December 1843. As a child into adulthood, I often had read and viewed several movies and television adaptations of Ebenezer Scrooge's life at Christmas time. Each and every version put to print or in the media fields explains the creator's own interpretation of how a stingy and odious business man living in the early 19th Century London was haunted by first his ghostly partner Jacob Marley and then by three Apparitions of Christmas to show and mend the errors of his greedy ways.