Charlie Chaplin was a child pauper, website proves
Fascinating details of Charlie Chaplin's early years growing up in a grim Victorian workhouse can be revealed for the first time.
Fans of the legendary silent film star can now see the stark scrap of paper that details his incarceration in the squalid building.
Chaplin was admitted to the workhouse in London at the age of seven, along with his older brother Sydney, after his alcoholic father abandoned him when his mother was committed to an asylum in 1896.
There, the future Hollywood legend would have been exposed to appalling conditions and forced to survive on the most basic diet of gruel. Along with 11-year-old Sydney, he was made to work and would have been housed with unemployed men.
It had previously been believed that Chaplin spent time in a workhouse but no evidence existed to prove it. Now the newly released page of the workhouse notebook can be seen as the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) upload 500 years of history on to the web.
LMA bosses say the document is ‘concrete proof’ that Chaplin started life as a pauper, although he spent only a few weeks in the Newington Workhouse in Walworth, South London.
The hand-ruled page – dated ‘9th week Midsummer 1896’ shows Chaplin’s date of birth and reveals he was placed on a ‘number four’ diet, the worst available to workhouse youths. Chaplin later said his tough upbringing formed the basis for one of his best-known characters, The Tramp.
Read entire article at Daily Mail (UK)
Fans of the legendary silent film star can now see the stark scrap of paper that details his incarceration in the squalid building.
Chaplin was admitted to the workhouse in London at the age of seven, along with his older brother Sydney, after his alcoholic father abandoned him when his mother was committed to an asylum in 1896.
There, the future Hollywood legend would have been exposed to appalling conditions and forced to survive on the most basic diet of gruel. Along with 11-year-old Sydney, he was made to work and would have been housed with unemployed men.
It had previously been believed that Chaplin spent time in a workhouse but no evidence existed to prove it. Now the newly released page of the workhouse notebook can be seen as the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) upload 500 years of history on to the web.
LMA bosses say the document is ‘concrete proof’ that Chaplin started life as a pauper, although he spent only a few weeks in the Newington Workhouse in Walworth, South London.
The hand-ruled page – dated ‘9th week Midsummer 1896’ shows Chaplin’s date of birth and reveals he was placed on a ‘number four’ diet, the worst available to workhouse youths. Chaplin later said his tough upbringing formed the basis for one of his best-known characters, The Tramp.