Charlie Chaplin, considered one of the greatest silent movie stars, started his life as a pauper, it has been revealed. It was previously believed that Chaplin spent time in a workhouse in his childhood but no evidence existed to prove it. Now, a newly released document has provided evidence that the legendary actor survived on a "number four" diet, in fact the worst available to workhouse youths.
"People have been speaking of Charlie's time in a workhouse for a long time but this is the first actual concrete proof. As the record shows, he was put on a diet for very young children and it would have been the worst diet.
"He would have had the bare minimum to keep him alive -- gruel, porridge or basic cereals. Workhouses were desperate places, where those needing to rely on benefits were made to work for their survival," Chris Blackwood, a Spokesman for the London Metropolitan Archives, told the 'Daily Mail'.
The London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) has uploaded a hand-ruled page of the grim Victorian workhouse's notebook, dated '9th week Midsummer 1896', on its portal.
In fact, Chaplin was admitted to the workhouse in the British capital 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, according to the document.
There, he was 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 had possibly been housed with unemployed men.
Even Chaplin, who won three Oscars for his acting achievements before he died on Christmas Day 1977, aged 88, had later said that his tough upbringing formed the basis for one of his best-known characters, 'The Tramp'.
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