A Mother but not a Wife

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This is a singularly foolish Melodrama, setting forth the story of an unhappy girl who, after rejecting the proposal of a worthy but poor clergyman, enters the unworthy but remunerative service of a private detective. In that capacity she is employed not only to spy - for the purposes of divorce - upon a fashionable doctor, but to behave in such a way that she may be caught apparently staying with him in a hotel as his mistress. In circumstances neither credible nor edifying she is so caught, but unfortunately for her the appearances become realities, the result being that for the latter part of the harrowing nonsense she is seen as 'a mother but not a wife'. She falls lower and lower in the social scale, until by a series of astounding coincidences she is engaged as a parlourmaid by a lady whom she does not know to be the wife of her child's father, and she has to wait upon guests who chance to include her own sister and the clergyman whose suit she rejected. Hearing that her illegitimate child is dying and discovering that her employer is its father, the fashionable doctor, she tries to get him to save its life by means of his wonderful remedy for diphtheria but it is too late and the child dies. After this she is found starving on the streets and ready to sell herself to anyone for food, her misery being increased by the clergyman's failure to rescue her as he has promised, the cause of his defection being a blow on the head which has destroyed his memory, in the course of a fracas with the physician. In the end the poor thing poisons herself, which is perhaps the best thing she could do, as it brings to an appropriate close a piece of violent rubbish. Recommended for License. Ernest A. Bendall.