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Updated: September 23, 2025
Squeers had been caught by the Oxford Movement and the Gothic Revival, and had sought to give an ecclesiastical air to his famous seminary of Dotheboys Hall by transforming it into "Cheat'em College." That immortal pedagogue owed much of his deserved success to his skill in the art of drawing an advertisement: "At Mr. Terms, twenty guineas per annum.
'Slavery will always be, said the defenders of slavery. 'It is impossible to prevent those things, human nature being what it is, said others of schools like Dotheboys Hall. A little time ago England and Scotland were at one another's throats; a little before that clan fell upon clan with vindictive fury.
You'll find yourself at the peaceful village of Dotheboys, in Yorkshire, in something under a week's time, my young friend; and the next time you get away from there, I give you leave to keep away. Where's the clothes you run off in, you ungrateful robber? said Mr Squeers, in a severe voice. Smike glanced at the neat attire which the care of Nicholas had provided for him; and wrung his hands.
The M.P. leaned back in his chair. "Well, sir," he said, "I'm sorry to be a wet-blanket, but if that is so, the scheme is wrecked from the start. You don't know the men; I do. They're not going to line up, like the pupils of Dotheboys Academy, for a spoonful of brimstone and treacle." The meeting was slightly scandalised. The chairman, however, rose to the occasion.
Mr Squeers indulged in a retrospective look, for some quarter of a minute, as if this allusion to his lady's excellences had naturally led his mind to the peaceful village of Dotheboys near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire; and then looked at Ralph, as if waiting for him to say something. 'Have you quite recovered that scoundrel's attack? asked Ralph.
Squeers should have taken so much trouble to repossess themselves of an incumbrance of which it was their wont to complain so loudly; but the services of the drudge, if performed by any one else, would have cost some ten or twelve shillings per week in the shape of wages; and furthermore, all runaways were, as a matter of policy, made severe examples of, at Dotheboys Hall, as in consequence of the limited extent of its attractions, there was but little inducement, beyond the powerful impulse of fear, for any pupil, provided with the usual number of legs and the power of using them, to remain.
He had written to his mother and sister, announcing the safe conclusion of his journey, and saying as little about Dotheboys Hall, and saying that little as cheerfully, as he could. He hoped that by remaining where he was, he might do some good, even there; at all events, others depended too much on him to admit of his complaining just then.
Even the genius of Mr Dickens was never able to explain satisfactorily to the readers of Nicholas Nickleby, why Squeers, who never taught anything at Dotheboys Hall, and never intended anything to be taught there, should have thought it necessary to engage an usher to teach nothing; and exactly in the same way, it is an insoluble problem why the Pontifical Government, which never tells anything and never intends anything to be told, should publish papers, in order to tell nothing.
English artists in literature and in painting have done some great reformatory work. Charles Dickens overthrew some dreadful abuses by writing certain novels. The one which has most interest for children is the awful story of Dotheboys' Hall, which exposed the ill treatment of pupils in a certain class of English schools.
Something like this would be what, after four years, the Royal Commission would have said; but it would not matter in the least what the Royal Commission had said, for by that time the philanthropists would be off on a new tack and the world would have forgotten all about Dotheboys Hall and everything connected with it.
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