Falling Heads by Colin Hayden Evens

Saturday-Night Theatre: Falling Heads
Sat 25th Mar 1995, 19:50 on BBC Radio 4 FM
By Colin Haydn Evans

With Ronald Pickup as Noel Pemberton Billing, Leslie Phillips as Lord Justice Darling and Celia Imrie as Maud Allen.

In 1917 Noel Pemberton Billing MP published a review of Oscar Wilde's Salome accusing the leading actress of treason.
Director Chris Wallis

Lloyd George: Norman Rodway
Jack: Robert Whelan
Eileen: Susan Jeffrey
Casson: Simon Carter
Ransome: John Rowe
Repington: Graham Padden
General: Geoffrey Whitehead
Savage: Andy Redman
Spencer: Robert Daws

Noel Pemberton Billing found not guilty at Old Bailey
Corrupt morals and the British elite on trial

London, 5 June 1918 - One of the most extraordinary cases ever tried in a British law court has come to a close.

Noel Pemberton Billing, MP, has been found not guilty of criminal libel against actress Maud Allan. The charge stemmed from a paragraph published in Billing's Vigilante newspaper, which made reference to a performance of Oscar Wilde’s play Salome, in which Allan was to star.

Billing claimed that the performance was aimed specifically at a morally corrupt subset - numbering 47,000 people - of British society. Billing further claimed that the names of the members of this immoral group have been compiled into a list by German authorities, who have been using this information as leverage against them in an attempt to demoralise the British public and thereby weaken the war effort.

Speaking in the aftermath of the verdict, Mr Justice Darling remarked that the case had arisen entirely from the production of the play, which has been banned from being performed in public, but was able to be produced privately.

The verdict was met with cheers from the crowded public gallery inside the Old Bailey and from the crowds that had gathered outside the building.

On receiving the judgement, Hume Williams, KC, intimated that two further indictments – one of which was for obscene libel – would not be proceeded with.

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]

[RTÉ Century Ireland 1913 - 1923 Boston College]
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