AustLit

An adaptation of Dion Boucicault's The Poor of New York (1857). The localisations included references to a Melbourne institution's recent bankruptcy. 'Indeed,' writes the Argus' theatre critic, 'the first villain, a most pernicious one, is made to assume the name of John Carrier, a bank manager, who by a thousand references in the language of the play is understood to represent an official in connexion with the institution to which we have already alluded'. The review goes on to record : 'This individual's clerk is a clever rascal, who after abetting his employer in all his scoundrelism, and living on the profits, suddenly turns a sort of Queen's evidence, and reads his master a high moral lesson before committing him to the police' (8 September 1863, p5).