Charlie Chaplin’s son has unveiled a memorial to a Romany Gypsy community who lived in Smethwick after evidence pointed to the screen legend being born in the camp.
Michael Chaplin praised the “beautiful” granite monument as he was followed by the cameras in what is now Black Patch Park.
The unveiling is the most high-profile acknowledgement yet that the Little Tramp star was born in the West Midlands, not London.
“It’s a great honour to be asked to come and unveil the memorial because it was one of the biggest stop-over or winter quarter places for gypsies,” Michael said.
“Gypsies have been wandering throughout Western Europe since the early 1600s and they carry their own world with them.
“That has not been much acknowledged, it’s like they are not there for most people and yet they’ve contributed to society, they’ve shown us another way of living.
“They are very joyful in their way of living and they have a certain amount of freedom, they don’t do all the things we do, so we should cherish more the fact that these people lived here.”
Charlie Chaplin’s link with the park emerged in 1991 after his daughter Victoria found a secret letter in his desk. Written by a man called Jack Hill, from Tamworth, the note called Chaplin a “littler liar” for claiming in his autobiography that he was born in London in 1889.
Michael believes it is “pretty likely” his father was born in the gypsy queen’s caravan, even though no birth certificate has ever been found.
He said: “The fact that letter was written to him by Jack Hill shows that it had some meaning to him because he kept it locked in a draw.
“He received a lot of fan letters but that particular letter was locked away and he left it there so it had a special meaning to him.
“Maybe it was just he knew he was gypsy and he liked the idea he was born in a caravan on the Black Patch. I think maybe he didn’t know where he was born because there was no registration, but maybe that letter coincided with something he’d heard himself.”
Chaplin Snr’s mother and father were based in South London but were travelling performers and she came to the West Midlands more than once.
Michael, aged 69, said: “It’s highly possible that being alone she had no money and nowhere to go and if she had a family contact up on Black Patch maybe that was where she chose.
“The alternative was the workhouse and no one wants to have a child in the workhouse, it can get taken away from you.
“All that makes a strong argument.
“The problem is gypsies don’t write things down, they don’t leave traces.
“We may never get that missing piece in the puzzle but there’s still hope, there’s still things that can be done.”
Michael, who flew in from the south of France, was greeted and photographed by dozens of affectionate locals on his visit to unveil the monument at the invitation of the Birmingham Romany Memorial Review group.
The memorial, engraved with the names of the leading Romany Gypsy families, replaces a smaller plaque mounted on a stone which has been moved to the nearby Soho Foundry Tavern. The pub also hosted a marquee with stalls featuring the work of author Ted Rudge and fellow members of the group.
The historians are now hopeful that the event will lead to people coming forward to shed more light on where the great entertainer first drew breath.
