Tiny Tim a real person that existed?

Looking for a reference to an autobiographical sketch by Dickens about the origin of "A Christmas Carol" which is quite startling. I heard an in depth radio review/analysis of this work and it was very provocative.
It is a commentary by Dickens about how he met a man who showed him around and introduced him to his family, including his young handicapped son, workplace, friends in a pub, over the course of a couple of days up to Christmas eve. The next day, all evidence of the visitation was gone. The house abandoned, friends missing, pub closed down. He did talk to the landlord of the house where the man and his family resided and learned that the man in question had died seven years prior, on christmas eve. The mans name was Jacob Marley and his son, who had also died later, was named Tim.
If anyone has any idea how I could get any research material or a reference on this specific subject please contact me, as it is very important.
"May god bless us, everyone" :santasmil
jollyollie

These might help you out. I have a autobiographical book of Dickens', but I can't find the story you're looking for. Maybe it's in a different book:

Davis, Paul. The Lives and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.

Kaplan, Fred. Dickens: a Biography. New York: William Morrow, 1988.

When looking for information on A Christmas Carol's original publishers, for another thread here, I came across this information:

Quote:

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Invited to speak at the first annual general meeting of the Manchester Athenaeum (an adult education institute for the working class), Dickens had stayed with his beloved older sister Fan (now Mrs. Henry Burnett), one of whose two young sons was a frail cripple. The prototype of Tiny Tim (in the initial draft named "Fred," after Dickens' younger brother) died early in 1849, following the death of his mother on 2 September, 1848 (when Dickens was at work on the last of the Christmas Books).

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva13.html

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It would seem that Tiny Tim was based on Dickens' own nephew. I've never heard the story you mention, either, unfortunately, so I can't give you any information on the origins of Cratchett or Marley.

I've never heard that story, but that is so scary.

Before Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, he had written The Old Curiosity Shop wherein the main character Little Nell dies in the end. This death of Little Nell caused such an uproar in the reading public (it's hard for us to imagine just how popular Dickens was in his time and what a readership he had), that Dickens included at the end of A Christmas Carol and he stated it in capital letters: TINY TIM DID NOT DIE. Tiny Tim may have been based on a real person, but then I think most of Dickens' characters were.