Gradgrind Gradgrind Mr Thomas Gradgrind is the notorious school board Superintendent in Dickens's novel "Hard Times" who is dedicated to the pursuit of profitable enterprise. His name is now used generically to refer to someone who is hard and only concerned with cold facts and numbers. In the story, the man himself he was the father of five children, naming them after prominent utilitarians such as Robert Malthus. He also ran a model school where young pupils were treated as machines pitchers which were to be filled to the brim with facts. This satirised Scottish philosopher James Mill who attempted to
Charles Dickens a chapter on Charles Dickens, who was not amused by what Powell had written. One item that seemed to have annoyed him was the assertion that he had based the character of Paul Dombey ("Dombey and Son") on Thomas Chapman, one of the principal partners at John Chapman & Co. Dickens immediately sent a letter to Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor of the New York literary magazine "The Knickerbocker", saying that Powell was a forger and thief. Clark published the letter in the "New-York Tribune", and several other papers picked up on the story. Powell began proceedings to sue these publications,