Richard Starkey

Father of Ringo Starr, originally a Liverpool dockworker and member of a large family. He had two brothers, Billy and Georgie, and three sisters, Angie, Lily and May. He later changed jobs and began to work in a bakery where he met Elsie Gleave.

They were married in 1936 and initially moved in with Richard’s parents who lived in the Dingle area of Liverpool.

They then moved into a small two-storey terraced house in Madryn Street in the same area. Their son Richard, named after his father (a working class tradition of the time), was born in 1940.

Although Richard senior was called Dickie, it was decided to call Richard junior Richie. Dickie Starkey left the family home when Richie was three years old. There seemed to be no acrimony and the couple was divorced.

There were only a few brief occasions when Richie saw his father again, twice when he was a young child. Dickie had remained in Liverpool and still worked at the bakery and visited his son during one of his regular hospital confinements. He also met him at the Starkey parents’ home in 1962.

Dickie remarried and moved from Liverpool to another town in the north-west of England. Little was heard of him until 1980 when the Daily Express ran him down and wrote a story on him. Now a window cleaner, he was to say about his son: ‘He’s done well, the lad, and good luck to him, but he owes me nothing.’ Dickie also mentioned that the only item of Beatles memorabilia that he possessed was an autographed photograph.

Copyright: Bill Harry, from 'The Beatles Encyclopedia', published by Virgin Publications.

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