Ringo’s Childhood
Surviving “a Dickensian chronicle of misfortune”
Only one future member of The Beatles emerged from absolute poverty and what biographer Bob Spitz terms “a Dickensian chronicle of misfortune”. On three occasion doctors warned his mother that ‘he’d not make it through through the night’ (Lewisohn).
Richard Starkey grew up at 10 Admiral Grove. This was a back-to-back house terraced in Dingle — an area associated with crime, poverty and social deprivation. There was no bathroom or indoor W.C.
Family upheaval
Ringo’s biological father, Richard, is described as a ‘confectioner’ in official records. Informal reports suggest that this was a fancy term for working in a bakery. Even the term ‘working’ might flatter as Richard spent most of his waking hours ‘drinking and dancing in pubs, sometimes for several consecutive days.’ What money he did earn was largely spent on beer and ballroom shoes.
Richard (senior) bolted early — taking his sugary cakes with him. The parallel with one Alfred Lennon would not have escaped Mimi. Starkey Senior made even the hapless Freddie seem a model of paternal dedication. Ringo would later say that he had only met his biological father on a couple of occasions and had no memories of him at all.
As with John, an admirable stepfather stepped up to the parenting plate: Harry Graves. And his biological mother, Elsie, was even more fiercely protective than Mimi.
Familial upheaval in infancy had a less obvious impact on Ringo than it did John. What marked him more profoundly was a series of health crises in his childhood and adolescence.
Near death experiences
The then Richard Starkey experienced two major medical episodes. According to Lewisohn, Richard Starkey was ‘a robust infant’ but fell ‘dangerously ill in the early summer of 1947’.
Rushed by ambulance to the Royal Liverpool Children’s Hospital, the six-year-old was diagnosed with acute appendicitis. An operation revealed that the appendix had burst causing infected peritonitis.
As he was wheeled into theatre, Richard requested a cup of tea. The nurse responded, ‘When you come round.’
She kept her promise but it was ten weeks before Richard got his tea. In that time, his mother Elsie was told three times that he would not survive the night. One of these occasions was the eve of his seventh birthday.
He continued to slip in and out of consciousness for several months. Even when he left hospital at the beginning of 1948, convalescence from his surgical wounds was slow and painful. There was also a set back which prolonged his stay: “I fell out the bed and ripped open all these stitches in my stomach. So they had to dive in again and sew me up.”
Schooling
Ringo’s education far more limited than that of his future bandmates. Ill health was a major factor in this, but his alienation from formal learning was always apparent
Though his local primary school was literally at the end of his street, R Starkey made rare appearances there, even when he was healthy. At Dingle Vale Secondary Modern, he was taken off the school roll long before he was legally entitled to leave.
While others were taking exams, Richard was sitting at home, listening to his stepfather’s jazz records. Later he would be self-conscious his lack of schooling, but he developed other social skills to compensate. The other Beatles, for example, would rib him about his ‘Ringoisms’ but always respected his intelligence, wit and verbal creativity.
They may have laughed at his phrase ‘a hard day’s night’ but they instantly recognised its appeal.
Second Medical crisis
Once fully recovered from peritonitis, Richard Starkey appeared to return to robust health. Then six years after the first medical disaster came a second.
In early June 1954, the now thirteen-year-old had chest problems. He returned to the Royal Liverpool Children’s Hospital, where he was diagnosed pleurisy. During a ten week stay his condition developed into tuberculosis.
TB — the scourge of the urban poor— was still endemic in Liverpool, which had one of the highest rates in Europe. It was still potentially fatal — George Orwell had died from complications just four years earlier. But the arrival of antibiotics came to the rescue of the thirteen year old Richard, as he later movingly described
“God, you know, shined his lights on me in 1953 or ’54 when they discovered Streptomycin. And that’s what saved me.”
Once the danger was passed he was sent off to the hospital’s convalescence unit. This was Heswall, across the Mersey and away from smog.
So they shipped me off to a greenhouse in the country… just this huge greenhouse where instead of flowers, they put all us kids in there and let us breathe some decent air for a change and gave us streptomycin.
He was still there at the beginning of 1955, a bored, restless teenager, isolated from his peers and falling ever further behind in educational terms. He did have his first drum, though..
Few would have bet on the young Richard Starkey going on to enter his ninth decade. After his long spell in hospital, he did make a full recovery but never returned to the classroom. With no qualifications, a history of ill health and one untutored musical skill, his future prospects seemed limited. Like Mike, his character in That’ll Be the Day (1973) he drifted into itinerant work, most significantly as a holiday camp drummer at Butlins.
And yet the sickly boy with limited career prospect would outperform all expectations. A key factor has been resilience — the inner strength that pulled him through his childhood misfortunes would come again to his rescue when the pressure of his success threatened to destabilise him.
Another important element has been adaptability. When Rory Storm decided his birth name was insufficiently showbiz, he showed his own Dickensian flair in choosing a new one. Ringo Starr — unforgettable and perfectly evocative of his third quality: a charismatic likeability.
Contemporary reviews of The Beatles debut film A Hard Day’s Night (1964) were particularly impressed by Ringo. They noted his winning combination of modesty, vulnerability and amiable charm. These qualities have carried Richard Starkey through a very tough childhood, the madness of Beatlemania and a later struggle with alcoholism.
There is a photo of the six-year-old Richie on his hospital bed. Dangerously ill, he still grins cheerfully for the camera. Somehow that sheer joie de vivre has miraculously remained intact — as it does to this day.
