My Autobiography

punishment day, when he was marched into the gymnasium with the others and to his shocked amazement saw my head peering over the desk. He told me afterwards that when he saw me receiving three strokes he wept with rage.
A younger brother referred to his older brother as ‘my young ’un’, which made him feel proud and gave him a little security. So occasionally I saw ‘my young ’un’, Sydney, as I was leaving the dining-room. As he worked in the kitchen, he would surreptitiously hand me a sliced bread roll with a thick lump of butter pressed between, and I would smuggle it under my jersey and share it with another boy – not that we were hungry, but the generous lump of butter was an exceptional luxury. But these delicacies were not to continue, for Sydney left Hanwell to join the Exmouth training ship.
At the age of eleven a workhouse boy had the choice of joining the Army or the Navy. If the Navy, he was sent to the Exmouth. Of course, it was not obligatory, but Sydney wanted to make a career of the sea. So that left me alone at Hanwell.
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Hair is vitally personal to children. They weep vigorously when it is cut for the first time; no matter how it grows, bushy, straight or curly, they feel they are being shorn of a part of their personality.
There had been an epidemic of ringworm at Hanwell and, as it is most contagious, those infected were dispatched to the isolation ward on the first floor overlooking the playground. Often we would look up at the windows and see those wretched boys looking wistfully down at us, their heads shaved all over and stained brown with iodine. They were a hideous sight and we would look up at them with loathing.
Thus when a nurse stopped abruptly behind me in the dining-room and parted the top of my hair and announced: ‘Ringworm!’ I was thrown into paroxysms of weeping.
The treatment took weeks and seemed like an eternity. My head was shaved and iodined and I wore a handkerchief tied around it like a cotton-picker. But one thing I would not do was to look out of the window at the boys below, for I knew in what contempt they held us.
During my incarceration Mother visited me. She had in some way managed to leave the workhouse and was making an effort to establish a home for us. Her presence was like a bouquet of flowers; she looked so fresh and lovely that I felt ashamed of my unkempt appearance and my shaved iodined head.
‘You must excuse his dirty face,’ said the nurse.
Mother laughed, and how well I remember her endearing words as she hugged and kissed me: ‘With all thy dirt I love thee still.’
Soon afterwards, Sydney left the Exmouth and I left Hanwell and we joined Mother again. She took a room at the back of Kennington Park and for a while she was able to support us. But it was not long before we were back in the workhouse again. The circumstances that led up to our return were something to do with Mother’s difficulty in finding employment and Father’s slump in his theatrical engagements. In that brief interlude we kept moving from one back-room to another; it was like a game of draughts – the last move was back to the workhouse.
Living in a different parish, we were sent to a different workhouse, and from there to Norwood Schools, which was more sombre than Hanwell; leaves darker and trees taller. Perhaps the countryside had more grandeur, but the atmosphere was joyless.
One day, while Sydney was playing football, two nurses called him out of the game and told him that Mother had gone insane and had been sent to Cane Hill lunatic asylum. When Sydney heard the news he showed no reaction but went back and continued playing football. But after the game he stole away by himself and wept.
When he told me I could not believe it. I did not cry, but a baffling despair overcame me. Why had she done this? Mother, so light-hearted and gay, how could she go insane? Vaguely I felt that she had deliberately escaped from her mind and had deserted us. In my despair I had visions of her looking pathetically at me, drifting away into a void.
We heard the news officially a week later; we also heard that the court decreed that Father must take over the custody of Sydney and me. The prospect of living with Father was exciting. I had seen him only twice in my life, on the stage, and once when passing a house in the Kennington Road, as he was coming down the front garden path with a lady. I had paused and watched him, knowing instinctively that he was my father. He beckoned me to him and asked my name. Sensing the drama of the situation, I had feigned innocence and said: ‘Charlie Chaplin’. Then he glanced knowingly at the lady, felt in his pocket and gave me half a crown, and without further ado I ran straight home and told Mother that I had met my father.
And now we were going to live with him. Whatever happened, Kennington Road was familiar and not strange and sombre like Norwood.
The officials drove us in the bread van to 287 Kennington Road, the house where I had seen my father walking down the garden path. The door was opened by the lady who had been with him at the time. She was dissipated and morose-looking, yet attractive, tall and shapely, with full lips and sad, doe-like eyes; her age could have been thirty. Her name was Louise. It appeared that Mr Chaplin was not at home, but after the usual formalities and the signing of papers the official left us in charge of Louise, who led us upstairs to the first landing into the front sitting-room. A small boy was playing on the floor as