In a juvenile court hearing, it emerges that the 15-year-old Elizabeth has been found in a compromising position in her bedroom with a 47-year-old man, Mr Elliot.

Elizabeth is one of four children in a struggling working-class family, her mother a hard-working cook, her father ran into debt while he was unemployed and found a job working in California.

[7] Cotes later wrote the play "was sensationally successful, and transferred from our tiny theatre in Notting Hill to the West End.

It was gratifying to see a smash hit in the heart of London with a team of actors, all of them good, some of them outstanding, but each willing to be a cog in the wheel, none of them playing for self.

"[15] In 1946 Rank offered $50,000 for the film rights to the play with the idea being to have it made by Bryan Foy's unit at Eagle Lion.

Box refused and the censored backed down agreed that "the film might possibly act as a warning to them (young people) instead of an encouragement to moral laxity.

"[17] Sue Harper and Vince Porter wrote " It was an uncompromising film about the social controls on female chastity, but its visual bleakness and sexual radicalism made it a box office failure.

"[20] Monthly Film Bulletin said "Apart from being pointlessly toned down, Elsa Shelley's old club theatre success has been adapted to the screen with depressingly unimaginative fidelity and an almost total lack of cinema sense.