The Deceit and Desire

FORMAT: Full length feature

COMP: Kramer v Kramer meets The Age Of Innocence

Pages: 107

LOGLINE: Arthur Delaney struggles to raise his three young children after the death of his wife in 1882 and is persuaded to place them in a refuge, only to discover they have been transported to Canada as child labour. So ensues a legal battle against the anti-Catholic Emma Stirling to have them returned, that takes him on a desperate search in a strange land.

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The story begins in 2020 at the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry where Patricia Dishon introduces the case of child transportation to Canada in the late 1800s beginning in Edinburgh in 1882 with Arthur Delaney, an Irish immigrant descendent, living in one of the many rundown tenements in the Royal Mile with his pregnant wife Mary and their three young children, James (7), Annie (6) and Robina (4). 

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His world is turned upside down when Mary dies in childbirth with the newborn dying soon after being born and Arthur struggles to work full-time while raising his three children.

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It is at this time that he meets Miss Guthrie, an assistant in the Edinburgh and Leith Children's Aid and Refuge Charity run by Emma Stirling, who is in the process of concluding an agreement with the Canadian Government to transport children to Canada as part of an immigration programme.

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Miss Guthrie, aghast at the condition of the children, encourages Arthur to place the children in the care of the charity in the knowledge that he can retrieve them at any time.

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Eventually Arthur, who has lost his job and struggling to cope, places the children in the Refuge, but crestfallen and overcome with despair, he takes to alcohol and loses all sense of self and is burdened with guilt while the children, taken under the wing of the anti-Catholic Emma Stirling, are trained and transported to Hillfoot Farm in Nova Scotia.

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Arthur, at his lowest moment, weeps alone in St. Patrick's Church under the watchful eye of Cecilia who approaches him and offers help.

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Soon, their relationship blossoms and his predicament improves with the support of Cecilia who he marries at the Catholic church. With the full knowledge of the loss of his children, Cecilia encourages Arthur to retrieve the children from the Refuge only to discover that they have been transported abroad.

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Arthur, in his hour of need, approaches Father Hannan of St. Patrick's Church, who offers legal assistance via the church lawyer Ross Stewart. Soon legal proceedings are started to have the courts order the return of the children.

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Winning his case, the charity Directors admit all their attempts to retrieve the children have failed and so, using the money received from the charity after their guilty conviction, Arthur and private detective Grant Cunningham travel to Nova Scotia to find the children.

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So ensues a determined legal battle between Arthur, with the support of the close-knit community, against Emma Stirling and the charity, in an epic, emotional drama that takes him across the Atlantic to Nova Scotia in his desperate search to find and bring back his children. It is a time when religious faiths clash and well-intentioned objectives are warped by bigotry, revealing a period when child labour was considered acceptable and legal prosecutions were only available for the wealthy.

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A story that touches the heart, The Deceit and Desire will envelope you in one man's fall from grace and his salvation that will lead him to right the wrongs of others.