A Girl of the People

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

A melodrama made by the old machine. Jess, the heroine, was a factory girl and when Arthur married her his father, the baronet, cast him off. Jess went back to work and Arthur took to drink. The male and female villains make him (and all the other idiots) believe his marriage was illegal and Jess is cast off. The baronet dies and Arthur, succeeding him, drinks more and more and is going to marry the female villain, when his former marriage is found to have been legal. The female villain incites a mob to stone Jess and she is nearly killed but saved by the intervention of a good workman who loves her and a good priest. Arthur thereupon repents, makes a will in her favour and is slain by the male villain, who being betrayed by his female accomplice, escapes from prison and kills her also, leaving Jess and the good workman to be happy. There is a scene in which a comic character, who has become a policeman, gets drunk and is wheeled off in a barrow – p 57. It is not designed, however, in any animus against the Force and of course there are many precedents for that sort of thing. Recommended for Licence. G. S. Street.