Golden boy

Over the past 200 years, Dick Whittington has become one of Britain's best-loved pantomime heroes. Yet, as Michael McCarthy tells Jon Bauckham, the real-life story that inspired Dick's rags to riches tale is even more remarkable than the fiction

- Michael McCarthy

Every Christmas, British theatres are taken over by a ‘usual suspects’ roster of pantomimes: Jack and the Beanstalk, Aladdin and Snow White being among the most common. But while many of these stories are based on fables or fairy tales, one much-loved production – Dick Whittington, the story of the boy who heads for London in search of streets paved with gold – draws a surprising portion of its narrative from real-life events.

The titular ‘Dick’ is based on Richard Whittington, the medieval mayor of London who, just like his panto counterpart, left his home in the countryside and made his fortune in the big smoke. But how much of the story, which has captivated theatre-goers for centuries, is drawn from reality? And how much is plucked from the realm of fantasy? And, perhaps most importantly, did Whittington really have a pet cat?

These are questions that have long fascinated Michael McCarthy, author of Citizen of London: Richard Whittington, The Boy Who Would Be Mayor, the first major study of Richard Whittington in several decades. The book sees McCarthy providing a detailed account of the real Whittington’s remarkable rise to the difficulties of piecing together aspects of Whittington’s early life.

“Whittington first arrived in London around 20 years after the Black Death, which had peaked in Europe in the mid-14th century,” says McCarthy. “However, the problem we have is that the pandemic killed around 50 per cent of England’s rural clergy, who were the main people responsible for the recording of births, marriages, deaths and other key events at this time. Due to the turbulence of the period, many of the records you would normally expect to find simply haven’t survived.”