My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin Read Free Book Online

be strapped. He received three strokes with the birch and was led away to the surgery for treatment.
    On Thursdays, a bugle sounded in the playground and we would all stop playing, taking a frozen position like statues, while Captain Hindrum, through a megaphone, announced the names of those who were to report for punishment on Friday.
    One Thursday, to my astonishment I heard my name called. I could not imagine what I had done. Yet for some unaccountable reason I was thrilled – perhaps because I was the centre of a drama. On the day of the trial, I stepped forward. Said the headmaster: ‘You are charged with setting fire to the dykes’ (the lavatory).
    This was not true. Some boys had lit a few bits of paper on the stone floor and while they were burning I came in to use the lavatory, but I had played no part in that fire.
    ‘Are you guilty or not guilty?’ he asked.
    Nervous and impelled by a force beyond my control, I blurted out: ‘Guilty.’ I felt neither resentment nor injustice but a sense of frightening adventure as they led me to the desk and administered three strokes across my bottom. The pain was so excruciating that it took away my breath; but I did not cry out, and, although paralysed with pain and carried to the mattress to recover, I felt valiantly triumphant.
    As Sydney was working in the kitchen, he had not known about it until 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.
    *
    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,