Claims that Shakespeare's father was a fly-tipper are muck ado about nothing

The earliest known record of William Shakespeare's father living in Stratford-upon-Avon famously notes his fine in 1552 for making a "muckhill" on a street.

- Dalya Alberge

But now the long-held assumption that John Shakespeare was a 16th-century fly-tipper has been overturned as a myth. Far from being punished he was simply paying a waste disposal toll for detritus relating to his trade as a glover and tanner of leather.

David Fallow, a former financier who has spent years studying the Shakespeare family's wealth, has discovered that a fine had other interpretations then. "The meanings of a lot of these words have changed over the last 500 years. A fine was simply a charge, a rent or rates. There was absolutely no moral imputation to John Shakespeare's fine at all. Stratford muckhills in his lifetime were a rentable resource, for which the town could collect taxes." The 1552 document records that Shakespeare senior and two associates paid 12d (a shilling or 5p) for a midden heap or "mukhyll".

Fallow said this had long been misunderstood by various academics, including Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. "Freud wrote about how 'barbarous' John Shakespeare was - and it's absolutely wrong," he said.