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Fascinating details of Charlie Chaplin's early years growing up in a grim Victorian workhouse can be revealed for the first time.
Chaplin was admitted to the workhouse in London 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.
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Legend: Chaplin based The Tramp on his poverty-stricken time in London

There, the future Hollywood legend would have been 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 would have been housed with unemployed men.

It had previously been believed that Chaplin spent time in a workhouse but no evidence existed to prove it. Now the newly released page of the workhouse notebook can be seen as the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) upload 500 years of history on to the web.

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Workhouse: Chaplin's entry in the institution's book in 1896, when he was seven