We can never really know what was going through Carol Thatcher’s mind when she likened a tennis player to a golliwog, but there is no doubt that when the original golliwog made his first appearance he was the cause of great alarm.

Then all look round, as well they may
To see a horrid sight!
The blackest gnome
Stands there alone,
They scatter in their fright.

On a superficial examination of such an introduction, the authors of The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg, Florence Kate Upton and her mother Bertha, stand convicted of a prima facie charge of racism. Black people, it seems to say, are frightening, and in particular ones with frizzy hair, big red lips and large white staring eyes.

The Golliwogg, as he was then known, did not stay frightening for long. In the 1895 book, illustrated by Florence when she was trying to raise money to go to art school, he became friends with the two dolls, and was revealed to be a playful, lovable, chivalrous figure always getting into scrapes from which he had to be rescued by his friends Peg and Sarah Jane.

More adventures followed, and the books became enormously popular. When in 1909 the German toy company Steiff became the first to mass produce golliwog dolls – Miss Upton unfortunately failed to copyright the Golliwogg – they sold all round the world. In Britain the jam manufacturer Robertson adopted the golliwog as its emblem, and created collectable series of badges of Gollies playing various sports.

People loved them. Sir Kenneth Clark, the art historian, said that Miss Upton’s Golliwogg “was for me an example of chivalry, far more persuasive than the unconvincing Knights of the Arthurian legend. I identified myself with him completely, and have never quite ceased to do so.”

Childhood toy, lovable rascal, cheeky jam mascot; how can anything that innocent be regarded as racist?

That is certainly the view of many who were brought up with golliwogs. At the Museum of Childhood in London, where they have Miss Upton’s original doll, Catherine Howell, the collections officer, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “They were extremely popular and very well loved. I had golliwogs when I was growing up. They were just part of my soft toy collection. That’s what they are for most people – a favoured childhood toy.”

We know that Miss Upton, who was born in Flushing, New York, to English parents and moved to Britain when her father died, had a black doll when she was a child, and that she thought it was a rather ugly fellow. Her Golliwogg, she said, “was born of no deep, dark intentions, nor was he the product of a decadent craving for ugliness on the part of his creator. He simply walked quietly side by side with me out of my own childhood.”

Such dolls may have been regarded with affection by their young owners, but they reflected a society which took a dim view of black people who did not know their place. By the time Florence Upton was born, the negro minstrel doll was a popular toy with American children. Minstrel shows, in which white performers blacked up their faces to lampoon stereotypical black figures such as the happy-go-lucky plantation worker, were a popular entertainment in 19th-century America. David Pilgrim, the curator of the Jim Crow Museum in Big Rapids, Michigan, a collection of racist and civil rights memorabilia, said: “It was a way to mock African-Americans. A minstrel doll was a caricature, and her Golliwogg was a caricature of a caricature.”

Later depictions of golliwogs were less charming than Miss Upton’s hero; in Enid Blyton’s hands, for instance, they became rude, untrustworthy and stupid.

Miss Upton, who died in 1922, did not live long enough to witness such travesties, but even she was aware how her innocent creation had provided the fuel for a racial prejudice that she never intended. “I am frightened,” she reportedly said, “when I read the fearsome etymology some deep, dark minds can see in his name.” How much more frightened would she be today?

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