The Death of Poor Joe is a 1901 British shortsilentdrama film, directed by George Albert Smith, which features the director's wife Laura Bayley as Joe, a child street-sweeper who dies of disease on the street in the arms of a policeman.[2] The film, which went on release in March 1901, takes its name from a famous photograph posed by Oscar Rejlander after an episode in Charles Dickens' 1853 novel Bleak House, and is the oldest known surviving film featuring a Dickens character.[3][4]
The film was discovered in 2012 by British Film Institute curator Bryony Dixon, after it was believed to have been lost since 1954.[5][6] Until the discovery, the previous oldest known Dickens film was Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost, released in November 1901.[7]
