Three Blind Mice is the name of a half-hour radio play written by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...

 and broadcast

Broadcast

Broadcast or Broadcasting may refer to:* Broadcasting, the transmission of audio and video signals* Broadcast, an individual television program or radio program* Broadcast , an English electronic music band...

 on the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 Light Programme at 8.00pm on Friday May 30, 1947.

It was part of an evening of programmes in honour of the eightieth birthday of Queen Mary

Mary of Teck

Mary of Teck was the queen consort of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, as the wife of King-Emperor George V....

. The BBC had approached the Queen some months before and asked what programmes she would like to hear. Amongst a selection of music and variety, she requested something by Christie who was a writer she admired. Christie agreed, asking that her fee of one hundred Guineas

Guinea (British coin)

The guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England and later in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1663 and 1813...

 be donated to the Southport

Southport

Southport is a seaside town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in Merseyside, England. During the 2001 census Southport was recorded as having a population of 90,336, making it the eleventh most populous settlement in North West England...

 Infirmary Children's Toy Fund.

The idea for the play came from a real-life crime tragedy in 1945 with the death of a boy in foster care

Foster care

Foster care is the term used for a system in which a minor who has been made a ward is placed in the private home of a state certified caregiver referred to as a "foster parent"....

. Christie's official biography states that the name of the boy was Daniel O'Neill but contemporary newspaper reports state the name of the boy was Dennis O'Neill, aged twelve. Together with his younger brother, Terence (aged nine) he had been placed in the care of a farmer (Reginald Gough, aged thirty-one) and his wife (Esther, aged twenty-nine) of Bank Farm, Hope Valley, Minsterley

Minsterley

Minsterley is a village and civil parish in Shropshire, England. It is home to a large dairy operated by Uniq foods.The dairy currently employs nearly 500 people...

, Shropshire

Shropshire

Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...

, on July 5, 1944. Just over six months later, on January 9, Mrs. Gough rang a local doctor and reported that the boy was having fits. The doctor attended but Dennis died. He was severely malnourished and was covered in three-day old bruises. An inquest was held on February 5, 1945 at which the jury returned a verdict of Dennis having died due to "acute cardiac failure, following violence applied to the front of the chest and back while in a state of under-nourishment due to neglect". Two days before, On Saturday, February 3, Gough had been charged with manslaughter and his wife with having "wilfully ill-treated, neglected and exposed the boy in a manner likely to cause suffering and injury". They went on trial on March 15 and on March 19 both were found guilty of their respective charges. Gough was sentenced to six years and his wife to six months. The Goughs were divorced on October 22, 1946 on the grounds of his cruelty to her but their subsequent fate is not recorded. A first-hand account of Terence O'Neill's story was published by Harper Collins in March 2010 under the title Someone to Love Us (ISBN 9780007350186). A government enquiry by Sir Walter Monckton

Walter Monckton, 1st Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

Walter Turner Monckton, 1st Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, GCVO, KCMG, MC, PC was a British politician.-Early years:...

 ensued as a result of the case which on December 13, 1946 resulted in a revised set of rules relating to the placement of children in foster care. These came into effect on January 1, 1947.

At some point soon after transmission of the radio play the suggestion was made to Christie that she turn it into a short story. This was published in the US in Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan (magazine)

Cosmopolitan is an international magazine for women. It was first published in 1886 in the United States as a family magazine, was later transformed into a literary magazine and eventually became a women's magazine in the late 1960s...

magazine in May 1948 and then in the 1950 collection Three Blind Mice and Other Stories

Three Blind Mice and Other Stories

Three Blind Mice and Other Stories is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1950...

.

Christie saw the potential of expanding the half-hour radio play into a full theatre play and in 1952, The Mousetrap

The Mousetrap

The Mousetrap is a murder mystery play by Agatha Christie. The Mousetrap opened in the West End of London in 1952, and has been running continuously since then. It has the longest initial run of any play in history, with over 24,500 performances so far. It is the longest running show of the modern...

, the play that has the longest initial run of any play in the world, first came to the stage. As another play had run on the stage just prior to the Second World War

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 also with the title Three Blind Mice, Christie had to change the name. It was her son-in-law, Anthony Hicks, who suggested The Mousetrap, which is taken from Act III, Scene II of Shakespeare's

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

 Hamlet

Hamlet

The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

. Allan McClelland, in the role of Christopher Wren, was the only actor to make the transition from the radio production to the stage play.

No recording of the original radio plays exists and the script is not commercially available. Further, Christie asked that the short story not be published in the UK as long as The Mousetrap continued to run on the stage. The text of the latter play was published in 1954 by Samuel French

Samuel French

Samuel French was a U.S. entrepreneur who, together with British actor, playwright and theatrical manager Thomas Hailes Lacy, pioneered in the field of theatrical publishing and the licensing of plays....

 as 'French's Acting Edition No 153' and also in the HarperCollins

HarperCollins

HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...

 1993 collection The Mousetrap and Other Plays (ISBN 0-00-224344-X).

1947 Radio production

Director/Producer: Martyn C. Webster

Cast:

Barry Morse

Barry Morse

Herbert "Barry" Morse was an Anglo-Canadian actor of stage, screen, and radio best known for his roles in the ABC television series The Fugitive and the British sci-fi drama Space: 1999...

played Giles Davis

Belle Chrystall

Belle Chrystall

Belle Chrystall was a British actress who appeared in a number of leading roles in British films during the 1930s. She was born in Preston, Lancashire in 1910. She came to London and after appearing on stage was given a minor part in a film A Warm Corner, directed by Victor Saville but she was...

played Molly Davis

Gladys Young played Mrs Boyle

Richard Williams played Major Metcalf

Raf De La Torre played Mr Paravicini

Allan McClelland played Christopher Wren

Lewis Stringer played Detective-Sergeant Trotter

Lydia Sherwood

Lydia Sherwood

-Selected filmography:* Adventures of Don Quixote * The King of Paris * Little Friend * Spring in the Air * Midnight at Madame Tussaud's * The Four Just Men * When We Are Married...

played Mrs Lyon

Other parts were played by Marjorie Westbury

Marjorie Westbury

Marjorie Westbury was an English radio actress and singer. Her career lasted over fifty years.Born in Oldbury, Worcestershire, she studied Voice at the Royal College of Music in London between 1927 and 1930. During the 1930s she made many radio broadcasts as a soprano from the BBC studios at...

, David Kossoff

David Kossoff

David Kossoff was a British actor. Following the death of his son Paul, a rock musician, he became an anti-drug campaigner...

and Duncan McIntyre