[1] Dickens made reference to Elwes in Bleak House (1853) – along with another notable 18th century miser, Daniel Dancer – and in his 1865 novel, Our Mutual Friend.

[2] Elwes was also believed to inspire William Harrison Ainsworth to create the character of John Scarfe in his 1842 novel The Miser's Daughter.

He began wearing only ragged clothes, including a beggar's cast-off wig he found in a hedge and wore for two weeks.

After searching in vain for a bell, the relative was forced to move his bed several times, until he found a place where he could remain dry.

His biographer, Edward Topham, who knew him well, recounted: "it is curious to remark, how he contrived to mingle small attempts at saving.... After sitting up a whole night at play for thousands, with the most fashionable and profligate men of the time, amidst splendid rooms, gilt sofas, wax lights, and waiters attendant on his call, he would walk out about four in the morning, not towards home, but into Smithfield!

"[11]According to author William Haig Miller, Elwes "complained bitterly of the birds robbing him of so much hay with which to build their nests.

He once badly cut both legs while walking home in the dark, but would only allow the apothecary to treat one, wagering his fee that the untreated limb would heal first.

Despite his exceptional frugality, Elwes lost huge sums of money to his colleagues in unrepaid loans, uncollected debts and dubious investments.

On the day of the race, Elwes rode on horseback to the racetrack with nothing to eat for fourteen hours save a piece of pancake which he had put into his pocket two months earlier and which he swore to a startled companion was "as good as new".

At his neglected estates he continued to forbid repairs, joined his tenants in postharvest gleaning, and sat with his servants in the kitchen to save the cost of a fire elsewhere.

In his last years, he had no fixed abode and frequently shifted his residence between his unrented London properties in the neighbourhood of Marylebone, seeking out the ones that were temporarily unoccupied.

A pot boy recollected having seen an "old beggar" go into a stable at one of Elwes's uninhabited houses in Great Marlborough Street and lock the door behind him.

According to Edward Walford in Volume 4 of his Old and New London (1878): "In the lower part (of the house) all was shut and silent, but on ascending the stairs they heard the moans of a person seemingly in distress.

Upon searching the premises, however, Timms and the apothecary found the woman stretched lifeless on the floor, having apparently been dead for two days.

The family doctor was sent for, and, looking at the dying miser, was heard to remark: "That man, with his original strength of constitution, and lifelong habits of temperance, might have lived twenty years longer, but for his continual anxiety about money."

Even his barrister, who drew up his £800,000 will, was forced to undertake his writings in the firelight by the dying man's bedside in order to save the cost of a candle.

After having lived on only £50 a year, Elwes left £500,000 (approximately £81,000,000 as of 2021) to his two illegitimate sons, George and John (whom he loved but would not educate, believing that "putting things into people's heads is the sure way to take money out of their pockets"), and the rest to his nephew.

[17] Elwes is believed to have inspired William Harrison Ainsworth to create the character of John Scarfe in his novel The Miser's Daughter (1842).

[20] Charles Dickens made reference to Elwes in Bleak House (1853)—along with another notable 18th-century miser, Daniel Dancer—and some years later in his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend (1865).

[21] John Elwes was used as example of genetic miserly behaviour towards beneficiaries and the estates inheritance not being transferred historically on a primogeniture basis.