Background
Richard Whittington, the son of Sir William Whittington of Gloucester, was a wealthy merchant and philanthropist in London, who served as Lord Mayor of London at times between 1397 and 1420. The legend of Dick Whittington and His Cat was first recorded in writing in 1605 and was adapted as a play the same year, The History of Richard Whittington, of his lowe byrth, his great fortune. The story was soon included in several collections, including the fairytale collections of Joseph Jacobs. Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary in 1668, "To Southwark Fair, very dirty, and there saw the puppet show of Whittington, which was pretty to see". The artist George Cruikshank published an illustrated version of the story in about 1820.
The story is only loosely based on the life of Richard Whittington. Although Alice Fitzwarren, Dick's love interest in the play, is named after the historical Richard Whittington's wife, there is no historical evidence that Whittington ever had a cat. Possible sources of the cat in the legend were the type of boat that Whittington used for trading, known as a "cat", or the French word achat, meaning a purchase. Alternatively, Whittington may have become associated with a Persian folktale about an orphan who gained a fortune through his cat. This attribution of the cat story may have originated from a fifteenth-century Italian source, the Novella della Gatte. Aware of this source, William Gore Ouseley, in the nineteenth century, traced the story back still further, to a Persian manuscript, which he summarised as follows:
| “ | In the tenth century, one Keis, the son of a poor widow in Siraf, embarked for India with a cat, his only property. There he fortunately arrived at a time when the palace was so infested by mice or rats, that they invaded the king's food, and persons were employed to drive them from the royal banquet. Keis produced his cat; the noxious animals soon disappeared, and magnificent rewards were bestowed on the adventurer of Siraf, who returned to that city, and afterwards, with his mother and brothers, settled on the island, which from him has been denominated Keis, or according to the Persians, Keish. | ” |
In any case, about 1442, when Newgate Prison was rebuilt or renovated according to the terms of Whittington's will, a cat was carved over one of the gates. Also, in 1572, a chariot with a carved cat was presented by Whittington's heirs to the merchant's guild. Today, on Highgate Hill in front of the Whittington Hospital, there is a statue in honour of Whittington's legendary cat on the site where, in the story, the distant Bow Bells call young Dick back to London to claim his fortune.
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