John Needham's Double is an 1885 novel and 1891 play by Joseph Hatton, and 1916 silent film.
Novel
The novel is subtitled "A Story Founded on Fact" and is based on the story of Irish financier and politician John Sadleir, who committed suicide.[1]
The Saturday Review negatively reviewed the book, calling it "simply the story of John Sadleir .. with certain highly improbable, not to say impossible, additions and corrections of Mr. Hatton's own. The story itself is neither interesting not instructive, nor yet amusing.... However, Mr. Hatton must not be taken too seriously. Lovers of cheap sensation will not be hypercritical, and will probably find John Needham's Double exciting enough."[1]Punch's review called it a shilling dreadful but was slightly more positive: "there is no room for tall writing, or mere padding, when a real good story has to be told in two hundred small pages of print large enough to defy twilight and railway-carriage lamps."[2]
Play
Actress Marie Burroughs as Kate Norbury in the 1891 stage adaptation of the novel
The cast included Willard playing the dual roles of John Needham and Joseph Norbury, Marie Burroughs as Kate Norbury, Burr McIntosh as Col. Calhoun Booker, and Royce Carleton as Mr. Grant.[7]
^Pepper, Peter. "The Strange Case of Mary MacLaren", The Moving Picture Weekly (New York, N.Y.), June 24, 1916, pp. 9, 34. Internet Archive. Retrieved November 12, 2020.
