Plot

The Pickwick Club sends Mr. Pickwick and a group of friends to travel across England and to report back on the interesting things they find. In the course of their travels, they repeatedly encounter the friendly but disreputable Mr. Jingle, who becomes a continual source of trouble for all who know him. Pickwick himself is the victim of a number of misunderstandings that bring him both embarrassment and problems with the law.

We first see Mr. Pickwick engaging Sam Weller as an attendant; Sam having previously been employed as a boot boy at the "White Hart Inn." Mr. Pickwick then writes a note to his landlady with whom he has been living for a great many years, Mrs. Bardell, telling her that he hopes she will be pleased at the news of his having decided to take a companion. Mrs. Bardell misconstrues this into an offer of marriage, and when Pickwick returns he is received in a manner that completely surprises him. His attempt to explain the matter is a failure, and Mrs. Bardell promptly faints in his arms. To make the situation worse, at this moment his companions, Nathaniel Winkle, Tracy Tupman and Augustus Snodgrass, as well as Sam Weller. enter the room and discover the compromising situation. Mrs. Bardell, failing to obtain any satisfaction from Pickwick, decides to bring suit for breach of promise and engaged a pair of lawyers, Dodson and Fogg. A verdict is brought in against Mr. Pickwick, with damages of seven hundred and fifty pounds. Rather than pay this Mr. Pickwick goes to the debtors' prison. In the meantime Dodson and Fogg visit their client, Mrs. Bardell, in the attempt to get some money, and failing in this, she is herself imprisoned in the same place that holds Pickwick. Naturally this is quite a shock to all concerned and at the end Mr. Pickwick's heart is so softened by her distress that he decides to pay the damages, unjust as they are, and release both himself and Mrs. Bardell.—Moving Picture World synopsis