Editing Nicholas Nickleby (section)

===Yorkshire===
*'''Smike''': A poor drudge living in Squeers's "care". About 18 years old, Smike is a pathetic figure, perpetually ill and dim-witted, who has been in Squeers's care since he was very young. Nicholas gives him the courage to run away, but when that fails Nicholas saves him and the two become travelling companions and close friends. He falls in love with Kate, but his heart is broken when she falls in love with Frank Cheeryble. After Smike dies peacefully of "a dread disease" ([[tuberculosis]]), it is revealed that he is Ralph Nickleby's son, and thus first cousin to Nicholas and to Kate.
*'''Wackford Squeers''': A cruel, one-eyed, Yorkshire "schoolmaster". He runs Dotheboys Hall, a boarding school for unwanted children. He mistreats the boys horribly, starving them and beating them regularly. When Nicholas attempts to prevent his flogging Smike, fisticuffs ensue, and Nicholas severely beats him. He travels to London after he recovers, and partakes in more bad business, fulfilling his grudge against Nicholas by becoming a close partner in Ralph's schemes to fake Smike's parentage and later to obfuscate the will that would make Madeline Bray an heiress. He is arrested during the last of these tasks and sentenced to be [[Penal transportation|transported]] to Australia.

:Dickens insisted that Squeers was based not on an individual Yorkshire schoolmaster but was a composite of several he had met while visiting the county to investigate such establishments for himself, with the "object [of] calling public attention to the system." However literary critic and author Cumberland Clark (1862–1941) notes that the denial was prompted by fear of libel and that the inspiration for the character was in fact William Shaw, of William Shaw's Academy, [[Bowes]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Clark|first=Cumberland|title=Charles Dickens and the Yorkshire Schools|url=https://archive.org/details/charlesdickensyo00clar|year=1918|publisher=Chiswick Press|location=London|page=[https://archive.org/details/charlesdickensyo00clar/page/11 11]|oclc=647194494}}</ref> Clark notes a court case brought against Shaw by the parents of a boy blinded through neglect while at the school, in which the description of the premises matches closely that in the novel.<ref>{{cite news|title=Cheap schooling: Jones v. Shaw|date=31 October 1823|work=[[The Morning Post]]|page=2}}</ref> A surviving example of Shaw's business card is compared to that offered by Squeers in the novel and the wording is shown to match that used by Dickens.<ref>Clark (1918: 23–4)</ref> Shaw's descendant Ted Shaw is president of the [[Dickens Fellowship]] and claims that Dickens had "sensationalised and exaggerated the facts".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1316931/The-real-Squeers-was-no-Dickens-brute-claims-descendant.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1316931/The-real-Squeers-was-no-Dickens-brute-claims-descendant.html |archive-date=12 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=The real Squeers was no Dickens brute, claims descendant|last=Edwardes|first=Charlotte|date=22 April 2001|work=[[The Daily Telegraph]]|access-date=11 February 2012|location=London}}{{cbignore}}</ref>
*'''Mrs Squeers''': is even more cruel and less affectionate than her husband to the boys in their care. She dislikes Nicholas on sight and attempts to make his life at Dotheboys Hall as difficult as possible.
*'''Fanny Squeers''': The Squeers' daughter. She is 23, unattractive, ill-tempered, and eager to find a husband. She falls in love with Nicholas until he bluntly rebuffs her affections, which causes her to antagonise him passionately and openly. Tilda Price is her best friend but the relationship is strained by Fanny's pride and spitefulness. She is haughty, self-important and is deluded about her beauty and station.
*'''Young Wackford Squeers''': The Squeers' loutish son. His parents dote on him and he is very fat as a result of their spoiling him. He is preoccupied with filling his belly as often as he can and bullying his father's boys, to his father's great pride. When the boys revolt, they dip his head several times in a bowl of the disgusting brimstone (sulphur) and treacle "remedy" that they are regularly force-fed as a punishment.
*'''John Browdie''': A bluff Yorkshire corn merchant, with a loud, boisterous sense of humour. At the start of the novel he is engaged to Tilda Price and marries her about halfway through the book. Although he and Nicholas get off on the wrong foot, they become good friends when John helps Nicholas escape from Yorkshire. He later comes to London on his honeymoon and rescues Smike from Squeers' captivity, proving himself a resourceful and intelligent ally.
*'''Matilda "Tilda" Price (Browdie)''': Fanny's best friend and Browdie's fiancée. A pretty miller's daughter of 18, Tilda puts up with Fanny's pettiness because of their childhood friendship but later breaks off their friendship after she realises the extent of Fanny's selfishness. She is rather coquettish but settles down happily with John Browdie.
*'''Phib (Phoebe)''': The Squeers' housemaid, who is forced to endure Mrs Squeers' foul temper and Fanny's scorn in order to keep her job. She flatters Fanny to keep her in good humour. She is described as hungry.