ABSTRACT
Scene: an unidentified village in Derbyshire in the First World War. Two unmarried women—daughter of local squire Jenny Allington and unemployed working-class Mary Myles—have both discovered that they are pregnant by a soldier away at war. This was how Unmarried, a 20-minute silent feature film produced by the British production house Granger's Exclusives began. Portraying the two women as forlorn and rejected, the opening portrait fitted widespread cultural assumptions of the stigma attached to being unmarried and pregnant; the next scenes show how they become the subject of a local scandal. Village gossip and intervention ensue, and Sir John Allington, a member of the Society for the Improvement of the Morals of the Working Classes, leads a campaign to send Mary Myles to a ‘rescue home’ for unmarried mothers. After discovering that his own daughter Jenny is pregnant too, he feels compelled to expel her from the family home. Social prejudice and the fear of family shame outweigh compassion as four years pass and the Allington family remain unreconciled. When Jenny does return to the village, it is to leave her daughter in the care of her cousin, the parish clergyman Roland Allington. While at first Roland Allington is understood to be an upstanding pillar of the community, he is himself subsequently forced to leave the village and his parish for leading a ‘sex education’ campaign in the village. This misdemeanour provides a critical turn in Unmarried's plot and the vehicle for the clergyman—the film's hero—to forge a connection with a London-based charity for unmarried mothers, the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child (NCUMC). Over the next few years, Jenny Allington marries (unhappily), while Roland Allington marries Jenny's daughter. In another symbolic turn, Jenny's father dies, leaving the family estate to Roland Allington, who in turn converts it into a residential home for unmarried mothers along the lines of the hostels set up and down the country by the NCUMC. Mary Myles, who has trained as a nurse, is eventually reunited with her son Cyril and achieves a sense of self-worth as matron of Roland Allington's charitable home. Jenny Allington dies alone without ever revealing herself to her daughter. 1
