Editing Charlie Chaplin (section)

====Background and childhood hardship====
[[File:Chaplin at Hanwell.jpg|thumb|Seven-year-old Chaplin (centre, head slightly cocked) at the [[Central London District School]] for [[pauper]]s, 1897]]
Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. was born on 16 April 1889 to [[Hannah Chaplin]] (née Hill) and [[Charles Chaplin Sr.]] His paternal grandmother came from the Smith family, who belonged to [[Romani people]].<ref>Charles Chaplin, Jr., with N. and M. Rau, ''My Father, Charlie Chaplin'', Random House: New York, (1960), pp. 7–8. Quoted in {{cite web |url=http://www.adherents.com/people/pc/Charlie_Chaplin.html |title=The Religious Affiliation of Charlie Chaplin |year=2005 |website=Adherents.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110806142841/http://www.adherents.com/people/pc/Charlie_Chaplin.html |archive-date=6 August 2011 |access-date=3 March 2023 |url-status=usurped}}</ref><ref>Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography, page 19. Quoted in {{cite web|url=http://www.adherents.com/people/pc/Charlie_Chaplin.html|url-status=usurped|title=The Religious Affiliation of Charlie Chaplin|year=2005 |website=Adherents.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110806142841/http://www.adherents.com/people/pc/Charlie_Chaplin.html |archive-date=6 August 2011 |access-date=3 March 2023 }}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine|last=Hopewell|first=John|date=23 September 2019|title=Carmen Chaplin to Direct 'Charlie Chaplin, a Man of the World' (Exclusive)|url=https://variety.com/2019/film/news/carmen-chaplin-direct-charlie-chaplin-a-man-of-the-world-1203344589/|access-date=10 October 2021|magazine=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Hancock|first=Ian F.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MG0ahVw-kdwC&q=chaplin|title=We are the Romani People|date=2002|publisher=University of Hertfordshire Press|isbn=978-1902806198|pages=129}}</ref> There is no official record of his birth, although Chaplin believed he was born at [[East Street]], [[Walworth]], in [[south London]].{{sfn|Robinson|p=10}}{{efn|An [[MI5]] investigation in 1952 was unable to find any record of Chaplin's birth.<ref>{{cite news |last=Whitehead |first=Tom |date=17 February 2012 |title=MI5 Files: Was Chaplin Really a Frenchman and Called Thornstein? |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9086510/MI5-files-Was-Chaplin-really-a-Frenchman-and-called-Thornstein.html |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph |access-date=11 April 2012 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120424011812/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9086510/MI5-files-Was-Chaplin-really-a-Frenchman-and-called-Thornstein.html |archive-date=24 April 2012}}</ref> Chaplin biographer David Robinson notes that it is not surprising that his parents failed to register the birth: "It was easy enough, particularly for music hall artists, constantly moving (if they were lucky) from one town to another, to put off and eventually forget this kind of formality; at that time the penalties were not strict or efficiently enforced."{{sfn|Robinson|p=10}} In 2011 a letter sent to Chaplin in the 1970s came to light which claimed that he had been born in a Gypsy caravan at [[Black Patch Park]] in [[Smethwick]], Staffordshire (now in the borough of Sandwell in the West Midlands). Chaplin's son [[Michael Chaplin (actor)|Michael]] has suggested that the information must have been significant to his father for him to retain the letter.<ref>{{cite news |date=18 February 2011 |title=Charlie Chaplin Was 'Born into a Midland Gipsy Family' |url=https://www.expressandstar.com/news/2011/02/18/charlie-chaplin-was-born-into-midland-gipsy-family/ |newspaper=Express & Star |access-date=17 February 2012 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120222045249/http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2011/02/18/charlie-chaplin-was-born-into-midland-gipsy-family/ |archive-date=22 February 2012}}</ref> Regarding the date of his birth, Chaplin believed it to be 16 April, but an announcement in the edition of 11 May 1889 of ''The Magnet'' stated it as the 15th.{{sfn|Robinson|p=xxiv}}}} His parents had married four years previously, at which time Charles Sr. became the legal guardian of Hannah's first son, [[Sydney Chaplin|Sydney John Hill]].{{sfn|Robinson|pp=3–4, 19}}{{efn|Sydney was born when Hannah Chaplin was 19. The identity of his biological father is not known for sure, but Hannah claimed it was a Mr. Hawkes.{{sfn|Robinson|p=3}}}} At the time of his birth, Chaplin's parents were both [[music hall]] entertainers. Hannah, the daughter of a shoemaker,{{sfn|Robinson|p=3}} had a brief and unsuccessful career under the stage name Lily Harley,{{sfn|Robinson|pp=5–7}} while Charles Sr., a butcher's son,{{sfn|Weissman|2009|p=10}} was a popular singer.{{sfn|Robinson|pp=9–10, 12}} Although they never divorced, Chaplin's parents were estranged by around 1891.{{sfn|Robinson|p=13}} The following year, Hannah gave birth to a third son, [[Wheeler Dryden|George Wheeler Dryden]], fathered by the music hall entertainer [[Leo Dryden]]. The child was taken by Dryden at six months old, and did not re-enter Chaplin's life for thirty years.{{sfn|Robinson|p=15}}

{{quote box|width=25em|align=left|bgcolor=#E0E6F8|quote="I was hardly aware of a crisis because we lived in a continual crisis; and, being a boy, I dismissed our troubles with gracious forgetfulness."|source=Chaplin, on his childhood{{sfn|Chaplin|p=10}}}}

Chaplin's childhood was fraught with poverty and hardship, making his eventual trajectory "the most dramatic of all the rags to riches stories ever told" according to his authorised biographer [[David Robinson (film critic)|David Robinson]].{{sfn|Robinson|p=xv}} Chaplin's early years were spent with his mother and brother Sydney in the London district of [[Kennington]]. Hannah had no means of income, other than occasional nursing and dressmaking, and Chaplin Sr. provided no financial support.{{sfn|Robinson|p=16}} As the situation deteriorated, Chaplin was sent to [[Lambeth Workhouse]] when he was seven years old.{{efn|Hannah became ill in May 1896, and was admitted to hospital. Southwark Council ruled that it was necessary to send the children to a workhouse "owing to the absence of their father and the destitution and illness of their mother".{{sfn|Robinson|p=19}}}} The council housed him at the [[Central London District School]] for [[pauper]]s, which Chaplin remembered as "a forlorn existence".{{sfn|Chaplin|p=29}} He was briefly reunited with his mother 18 months later, but Hannah was forced to readmit her family to the workhouse in July 1898. The boys were promptly sent to [[West Norwood|Norwood]] Schools, another institution for destitute children.{{sfn|Robinson|pp=24–26}}

In September 1898, Hannah was committed to [[Cane Hill Hospital|Cane Hill]] mental asylum; she had developed [[psychosis]] seemingly brought on by an infection of [[syphilis]] and malnutrition.{{sfn|Weissman|2009|pp=49–50}} For the two months she was there, Chaplin and his brother Sydney were sent to live with their father, whom the young boys scarcely knew.{{sfn|Chaplin|pp=15, 33}} Charles Sr. was by then severely alcoholic, and life there was bad enough to provoke a visit from the [[National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children]].{{sfn|Robinson|p=27}} Chaplin's father died two years later, at 38 years old, from [[cirrhosis]] of the liver.{{sfn|Robinson|p=36}}

Hannah entered a period of remission but, in May 1903, became ill again.{{sfn|Robinson|p=27}} Chaplin, then 14, had the task of taking his mother to the infirmary, from where she was sent back to Cane Hill.{{sfn|Robinson|p=40}} He lived alone for several days, searching for food and occasionally sleeping rough, until Sydney{{snd}}who had joined the Navy two years earlier{{snd}}returned.{{sfnm|1a1=Weissman|1y=2009|1p=6|2a1=Chaplin|2pp=71–74|3a1=Robinson|3p=35}} Hannah was released from the asylum eight months later,{{sfn|Robinson|p=41}} but in March 1905, her illness returned, this time permanently. "There was nothing we could do but accept poor mother's fate", Chaplin later wrote, and she remained in care until her death in 1928.{{sfnm|1a1=Chaplin|1p=88|2a1=Robinson|2pp=55–56}}