Five Nights: When Preston was at centre of scandal on silver screen over "disgusting and indecent film"

And though the film might have been silent, those people certainly were not.

The film was Five Nights, and it was full of shenanigans.

It was based on a novel by the popular writer Victoria Cross, who was said to have chosen her pen name to annoy the late Queen.

The novel and the film told the story of a rich young artist, who sails to Alaska before coming back to his fashionable London studio.

The artist is shown wooing a Chinese woman, falling in love with his own cousin, getting her to pose for a picture he is painting, and shooting a man stone dead.

Controversially, he is also shown as the father of an illegitimate child.

The woman was played by a young actress named Sybil de Bray, who wasn’t Chinese at all.

Although this was only her second film, she had already enjoyed considerable success on the West End stage.

The Tatler had called her ‘a bewitching little actress,’ whose ‘daintiness and personal charm ensure for her a big reception.’

Sybil’s performance would be seen in Preston before it was seen anywhere else.

That was on August 30, 1915, when Five Nights was shown at the old King’s Palace theatre.

That place stood on a patch of land formed by Tithebarn Street, Bishopsgate and Old Vicarage.

And though it was bare and irregular from the outside, the inside was altogether different.

The foyer had a mosaic floor, tiled walls, and a bow-fronted pay box.

There was oak and brass everywhere.

And the steps might have been made of marble.

The auditorium, meanwhile, had tall columns flanking the stage and supporting a great arch.

There were deep cornices, curved private boxes, and domes in the ceiling.

And the seats were a riot of red plush.

The King’s Palace was full to the brim that Monday afternoon, with Edward Bennett among the several hundred people in the audience.

And he didn’t like what he saw.

“I am not an angel,” young Edward said, “but the film was disgusting to me.”

He was the projectionist at a rival cinema, and maybe had his own axe to grind. But what he said was also said by other Preston folk.

Margaret Buck lived in Spring Gardens, which was close to the King’s Palace (and now lies beneath the bus station).

She took great exception to the shenanigans, calling Five Nights, “a very indecent and disgraceful pictur e”.

Margaret worked in a cotton mill and claimed to visit picture houses four or five times a week.

‘ I have seven children and am not easily shocked and like a bit of fun,” she said. “But if I had known the sort of picture it was, I would not have gone to see it on any account, for I did not enjoy it, but was absolutely disgusted with it.

Taking his own place in the plush seats was the town’s chief constable, James Ker Watson.

H e had only recently come into the post, having beaten 50 other men who had much greater experience than he.

A Welshman with Scottish parents, he was barely 40 years old at the time, and he had only recently been appointed to the post.

He had come to Preston from Peterborough, where he had earned a reputation as a strict disciplinarian.

And what he saw in the King’s Palace that hot afternoon left him singularly unimpressed.

After the house lights had come up again, Mr Watson told a reporter that Five Nights was, “objectionable and offensive.”

And he implied that if the film was ever shown again, the theatre’s licence would be taken away.

There were still more Preston folk who felt the same way.

Frederick Daggers lived on Bedford Street, which ran off Adelphi Street, close to the town centre.

Like Mrs Buck, he had seven children, and he had seen Five Nights while convalescing.

A soldier in the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, Frederick had served on the Western Front before receiving a shrapnel injury to his chest.

Now, he called the film, “objectionable, suggestive and indecent.”

William Meagher had travelled further than most to the King’s Palace, having come all the way from New Longton to see the film.

“The impression it created upon my mind was a very painful one,” he said.

He had five sons who were all Roman Catholic priests.

“It is horrible to think,” William went on, “that men and women can degrade themselves and prostitute their talents in acting in a play which is the negation and antithesis of Christian morality. After it, the deluge.”

The reaction to Five Nights was similar elsewhere.

In Wallasey, no less a personage than the mayor called it “an extremely immoral and suggestive picture.”

“I would not have liked to have taken my wife or daughter to see such a thing,” he went on, “and if any female had been in the theatre I would have walked out.”

The film was banned there, and banned in Southport, St Helens and Runcorn as well.

And it was also banned in Accrington, Bradford, Coventry and Dublin.

Faced with Chief Constable Watson’s words the management of the King’s Palace decided to act cautiously.

After Five Nights had been shown there only once, the film was wound back onto its spool, put back in its can, and sent on its way.

In the weeks that followed, it would be shown in Eccles, Miles Platting and Ashton-under-Lyne without anyone there batting an eyelid.

There were, in fact, many places where the film was shown.

They included not just Manchester and Salford, but Liverpool and Blackpool, Hull, Newcastle and Edinburgh as well.

And in Cardiff, Five Nights was praised by a local newspaper.

“Its wonderful scenes have never been equalled in the history of cinematography,” the newspaper wrote. “In spite of all that has been said to the contrary, it is not marred by any objectionable scenes.”

It was when Walter Stott and Fred White found out what James Watson had said that the trouble really began.

They were Manchester businessmen, whose headquarters lay in the shadow of Victoria Station.

And they had been the men distributing Five Nights around the north west of England.

As they would later explain, they had paid a small fortune for that privilege.

Within days of the Preston showing, Walter and Fred issued a writ against Mr Watson.

They said that by calling their film “objectionable and offensive,” he had defamed them and damaged their business.

And they claimed damages of as much as £5,000 – a sum worth more than sixty times as much today.

The case would be heard in Manchester in February 1916, towards the end of a cold, wet winter, as German Zeppelins extended their terrifying raids across more and more of the country.

The venue for the trial was the great Assize court in Strangeways, right next to the prison. It was the largest building in the city at the time.

The proceedings lasted for two days, and on the evening of the first day, the gentlemen of the jury – and they were all gentlemen – were taken to see a special showing of Five Nights in a little cinema across the road.

In his defence, Chief Constable Watson claimed that what he had said was nothing more than fair comment.

And for its part, the jury agreed.

Late on the second afternoon of the trial, after deliberations that had lasted barely an hour, the foreman rose to his feet and announced that Walter and Fred’s claim was dismissed.

Back in Preston, everyone had moved on from Five Nights by then.

They had in fact begun moving on as soon as the film was sent on its way.

At the beginning of the following week, The Preston Herald had been in a reassuring mood.

The new film showing at the King’s Palace, the newspaper informed its readers, was a “wholesome drama” to which, “even the most carping critic cannot object.”

James Ker Watson remained the Chief Constable of Preston until his retirement in 1937.

And though Five Nights was only Sybil de Bray’s second film, it would also be her last.

As so many theatres did, the King’s Palace fell out of favour in the 1950s.

There was some talk of reviving it after that, but the final straw was a series of fires, started by youths with nothing better to do.

Developers moved in before the Sixties had properly begun to swing, and the place was knocked down and replaced by shops that would themselves become vacant.

Little trace of Five Nights now remains, save for a few documents in the Lancashire Archives on Bow Lane in Preston – together with two tantalising frames of the film itself.

David Hewitt’s book about the Five Nights affair – Gold, Violet, Black, Crimson, White – is published by Matador and costs £11.99. He can be found on Twitter @historycalled.