bringing Ralph's son (Smike) to Dotheboys Hall. An ex-convict, he returns to extort money from Ralph with the information that his son is alive. When that fails, he goes to Noggs, and eventually brings his story to light. In the epilogue, it is mentioned that he dies repentant of his crimes. 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. He gets his comeuppance at the hands of Nicholas when he is beaten in retaliation for the whipping of Smike. 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 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. 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. 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. Shaw's