Regeneration (1915)

After Owen Conway's mother dies, the ten-year-old is taken in by his tenement neighbors, but when the intoxicated husband beats him, Owen runs away. Later, Owen works chopping ice at the New York docks and defends a hunchback from assault by a street tough named Skinny. Owen leads a gang at age twenty-five. When District Attorney Ames takes socialite Marie Deering, who is anxious to see a gangster, to a cafe, Owen, to please Marie, saves Ames from a beating. Marie, disturbed by the suffering she sees, becomes a settlement worker. Owen, whom Marie teaches to read and write, accompanies her on a riverboat excursion for slum dwellers, during which Skinny starts a fire. After Owen, warned by Ames that his relationship with Marie is doomed, consults a priest, Skinny, whom Owen, to return a favor, has hidden after he stabbed a policeman, attempts to rape Marie. When Owen returns, Skinny shoots at him and mistakenly kills Marie. Owen heeds her dying wish that he not take vengeance. After the hunchback shoots the fleeing Skinny, who falls to his death, the hunchback and Owen pray by Marie's grave.