The Ticket-of-Leave Man

Allen Bancroft is a Lancashire man whose life collapses after a clever group of criminals pins a crime on him, sending him to prison. When he gets out on a ticket of leave, he faces the twin problems of clearing his name and finding honest work, while the same gang keeps applying pressure to pull him back into illegal ways. The story follows his daily grind against suspicion and manipulation, showing how reputation, desperation, and small-town contacts shape every choice he makes. The film stays close to the personal and social costs of a man trying to piece his life back together without giving away any surprises about how events resolve.

Directed by Henry J. Vernot, the 1914 picture was adapted from material by Charles Reade. The cast includes Sheldon Lewis as Allen Bancroft, Riley Hatch as General Gerard, and Eleanor Woodruff as Helena Gerard, among others, reflecting early cinema's habit of drawing on stage talent for silent screen melodramas.

Commercial records for many films from 1914 are incomplete, and reliable box office totals for The Ticket-of-Leave Man are not available. Any modern estimates would be speculative, so historical distribution and earnings remain largely undocumented for this title.

As an early crime drama, the film has value to historians and silent era enthusiasts rather than a broad modern audience. It's representative of the period when filmmakers adapted popular plays and novels for short, dramatic reels, and it helps trace how themes of guilt, redemption, and social stigma were filmed before feature-length storytelling became standard.

Contemporary reviews and audience ratings are scarce, and surviving reception data is minimal, with few modern votes or critical reappraisals. The movie centers on wrongful accusation, coercion by criminal networks, and the struggle to regain social standing, themes that still resonate today, even if the film itself is mainly of interest to collectors and scholars of early 20th century British and American screen adaptations.