Lottie Lyell

One-reeler short film.

When Bill, a worker at Woolloomooloo Wharf, breaks his leg, his wife, Nell has to go to work. She's successful, saving her daughter money, but she gets sick and dies after the operation, promising to raise Peggy the lady.

An adventuress, Cora Williams is in love with Howard Wilson, even though he is happily married to Mabel, and they have small children. Cora gets a man called Curtis to pretend to be in love with Mabel and engineers a situation where Howard walks in on them and gets the wrong impression.

The Woman Suffers is a complicated silent melodrama of revenge and sexual betrayal, only part of which survives. In the first two reels, which have been lost, a woman caught in an abusive marriage runs away with her infant son from her drunken husband. He falls on a knife and dies and she collapses in the bush. The child wanders off and is found by one family; the mother is rescued by another family and is unaware that her son lives.

The story is founded on fact. In a village on the south coast of England, young Margaret Catchpole is being courted by two rivals, Will Laud, a smuggler, and Lieutenant Barry of the coast guards. She favours Laud, and when he escapes from custody after a government raid on the smugglers, Margaret steals a horse and tries to join him. In a fight with the coast guards, Laud is killed an Margaret is arrested for horse-stealing and transported to Botany Bay. Only part of the film survives today.

Bill is a Woolloomooloo larrikin who vows to abandon his life of gambling and drinking after a spell in gaol following a raid on a two-up game. He falls in love with Doreen, who works in a pickle factory, but faces competition from a more sophisticated rival.