I am not quite sure where the description that appears here comes from but it has nothing to do with the film. This is the story of an orphan girl who is adopted, after her father is (wrongly) imprisoned and her mother dies of grief, by a rich with two sons (prologue). Years later, both sons, Frank and Harry, are in love with the girl, Louise but she has fallen for the rotten one - Frank and when his father disowns him she takes his part and leaves with him. She soon finds herself victim of his dissolute way of life, abandoned in London.
It is at this point that the film takes on its "Mysteries of London" character (vaguely inspired by the Victorian "penny dreadful" itself based on the rather fine mystery novels of Eugène Sue set in Paris).. The key to the genre is that the main character becomes the city-streets with all the various characters wandering around vaguely in search of each other. So the abandoned and homeless Louise and a mysterious ex-convict called Willis (a nod is as good as a wink to a blind man) haunt the embankment. The younger brother and his gang are something ways of getting back at the family that has disowned him. A former disabled employee of the family, Jack is now a street paper-seller. The good brother Harry is searching for Louise. From time to time they meet up - at one point the gang nearly murders the ex-convict Willis, the limping street-rat Jack meets up with Louise and then aids Harry in searching for her, the gang plans to murder or kidnap Harry - a particularly fine moment where the two bothers (Frank has pretended he knows the whereabouts of Louise) are being followed by the rest of the gang (getting ready to pounce) and are being trailed in their turn by Jack . Louise is contemplating suicide....but Willis is still haunting the embankment
These scenes are rather wonderful - a superb evocation of the London streets worthy of the "city symphonies" to come in the twenties so that, despite the rather uneven quality of the film as a whole and (sadly) the damaged footage, it is very well worth watching. If the whole film were as good as the best parts, it would be a forgotten masterpiece. It isn't but but is nevertheless a rather wonderful find.
