....After Charlie's widow, Oona, died in 1991, their daughter Victoria Chaplin inherited a bureau that had belonged to her father. One drawer remained stubbornly locked. When the locksmith jiggered it open, he found a letter in large, scrawly handwriting. A friendly note from an octogenarian called Jack Hill, who wrote from Tamworth in the 1970s to inform Chaplin that he was not one of south London's most celebrated sons, but that he had entered the world "in a caravan [that] belonged to the Gypsy Queen, who was my auntie. You were born on the Black Patch in Smethwick near Birmingham." Chaplin's birth certificate has never been located. His mother, Hannah – maiden name Hill – was descended from a travelling family. In the 1880s, the Black Patch was a thriving Romany community on the industrial edge of Birmingham. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that
Charlie Chaplin was a Gypsy from the West Midlands....
