Family backs calls to preserve Charlie Chaplin`s workhouse
(Artdaily.org)

The children of legendary British comic actor Charlie Chaplin have expressed dismay at the threatened closure of the Cinema Museum, once a workhouse for poor children where he was forced to live. The building in Elephant and Castle, an area of south London that has been undergoing rapid redevelopment in recent years, is owned by a hospital trust which is planning to sell it early next year. The Victorian-era building on Renfrew Road played a significant part in Chaplin`s impoverished childhood, family members including his actress daughter Geraldine Chaplin wrote in an open letter. `The workhouse is a building that played a great part in our father`s early life,` they said. `He and his mother and step-brother, abandoned by their father, lived nearby, in a variety of poor lodgings, and were frequently driven to seek refuge in the workhouse.` Chaplin and his half-brother lived at the workhouse on a semi-regular basis throughout their childhoods in the late 19th and early 20th centurie