The Cinema Museum, Housed in the Workhouse Where Charlie Chaplin Spent His Formative Years, Is Under Threat | Smart News | Smithsonian

Charlie Chaplin may be internationally renowned for his slapstick comedy, but his childhood was far from a gag. Indeed, the vaudeville star’s youth was marked by poverty and misery. After his parents separated when he was only 3 years old, his mother, who suffered from mental illness, struggled to provide for her children. And so, over the course of a decade, Chaplin passed in and out of the Lambeth Workhouse, a grim institution that offered shelter to London’s destitute.

Source: The Cinema Museum, Housed in the Workhouse Where Charlie Chaplin Spent His Formative Years, Is Under Threat | Smart News | Smithsonian