Cratchit family

The Cratchit family is an impoverished hardworking and warmhearted family in A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens.

The Cratchits are:

• Bob Cratchit, Ebenezer Scrooge’s underpaid and overworked clerk
• Bob Cratchit’s wife, identified only as Mrs. Cratchit in Dickens’s text
• their son Tiny Tim, known for saying “God bless us, every one!”; he remains cheerful even though he is destined to die young if he does not receive medical treatment (which his parents cannot afford) for his illness
• five other children: Martha, Belinda, Peter, and an unnamed girl and boy

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol to make his readers aware of the living conditions of the working poor in England, and he presented the Cratchits as a sympathetic lower-class family living and working in London.