What is the name of the cruel schoolmaster in Nicholas Nickleby?

The cruel schoolmaster in Nicholas Nickleby is Mr. Squeers, more fully Wackford Squeers. He runs Dotheboys Hall, a boarding school in Yorkshire for unwanted or neglected boys.

Squeers abuses the pupils through starvation, beatings, neglect, and bogus remedies. Dickens uses Dotheboys Hall to expose the exploitation of poor children at schools that accepted fees while providing little education or care. Nicholas Nickleby becomes a teacher there and eventually rebels after witnessing Squeers’s treatment of the boys, especially the sickly Smike.

Squeers is sometimes confused with Mr. Creakle, another Dickens schoolmaster. Creakle runs Salem House in David Copperfield, whereas Squeers belongs to Nicholas Nickleby. Mr. Gradgrind is the utilitarian school board figure in Hard Times, and Mr. Wopsle is a minor character in Great Expectations.

Dickens investigated Yorkshire boarding schools while preparing the novel. Squeers was presented as a composite, though later commentators proposed real schoolmasters as possible models.