GB
1905
14mins
Dir: William Haggar
Starring: William Haggar and Violet Haggar
The story of Charles Peace, one of Britain’s most notorious criminals
This is the earliest extant example of a British one-reel story film, and it features one of the earliest references to a railway. It was the beginning of a period of one-reel dramas that lasted until 1909. The quality now is quite poor, but their popularity helped spawn the cinema movement that we know today. Peace was an expert in cat burglary and the film reconstructs his real-life leap from a train on his way to trial in Sheffield for the murder of Arthur Dyson. The sequence sees Peace and the police board a train at Pembroke Dock station. The train consists of early compartment stock and it appears that a very small open cab loco is at the head. Although the title card above states 1903 this is an error as the film was made in 1905. Peace’s leap from the train in the film was shot at Llanion Halt, a short-lived (May 1905 – October 1908) halt a quarter of a mile east of Pembroke Dock station. Therefore. this is the rarest location to have ever appeared on film. Photographs of the halt do not appear to exist, meaning this footage is now the only documentation of its existence. Although unbeknownst at the time, history was well and truly made when the Haggars, through co-operation with the GWR, decided upon this location for the film (the halt may not even have yet been open when the sequence was filmed there). In real life, Peace’s leap from the train took place just past Worksop in Nottinghamshire, and a similar, but more daring stunt, was re-enacted in the 1949 film The Case of Charles Peace – which see. Information on this location was sourced from Rory Wilson via a newsletter published through the Welsh Railways Research Circle for which I am most grateful.
