For two years (1824–6) Dickens attended William Jones's graciously named school, Wellington House Classical and Commercial Academy, in the Hampstead Road. The school was a separate building from the main house and was 'sliced off' when a deep railway cutting needed to be made for the London and North Western Railway, running north from Euston Square. Dickens had already drawn on his memories of Jones, his ignorance, his truckling to wealth, and his sadistic pleasure in caning little boys, in his portrait of Mr Creakle and Salem House in David Copperfield (Mr Mell in the same novel must have been drawn from the gentle, exploted usher with his forlorn musical instrument); and condemned Jones more directly six years after writing 'Our School' in a speech on behalf of the Warehousemen and Clerks' School.
Read more...