Skeeziks

I've heard the term "Skeeziks" used by certain older people as a nickname for youngsters. Does anyone know where the term originated, and if it has any meaning?
Is it used in Great Britain?

I've never heard that in the UK.

Nor I. Colloquially over here, we use the ubiquitous "kid", though I've heard the older generation on occasion also use "nipper" or, if the child in question were a truculent and badly-behaved male teen, they might describe him as a "yob".

Hmm, I haven't heard "yob" used here in the States. "Nipper" I've heard in old movies featuring Brits.

I've done a bit more research, and it appears that a character by the name of "Skeezix" was in the old American comic strip "Gasoline Alley." It was also a character in a series of books under the name of "Uncle Wiggley." It would be interesting to know if it existed as a nickname before either of these came into being.

I get the impression from the way my Mother-in-Law uses the term that a synonymous expression might be "little scamp!(mischievous child)"

Apparently you missed my reply citing Skeezix the comic-strip character, which would have given you a head start on that research.

The Oxford Engl. Dict. lists "skeezicks" (with variant spellings -zecks, -zacks, -sicks) as a U.S. colloquial term, origin "? fanciful": "A good-for-nothing; a rascal; a rogue. (Also used playfully.)" First quotation, 1850, "Though Kister, that skeezecks, . . . Should come again thieving." So the word predated the comic strip.