In the tiny Northumbrian village of Bellingham in 1890, Herpetologist<nowiki/>t Dr Horace Adderson (John Cazabon) has successfully been keeping his wife Martha's (Dorothy Frere) unnamed mental illness under control by regularly injecting her with snake venom. When Martha dies giving birth to their daughter, local midwife Addie Harker (Elsie Wagstaff), who villagers believe is a witch, proclaims that the baby - who doesn't blink and is cold to the touch - is pure evil, the 'devil's offspring' and must be destroyed. She is stopped before she can stab the new-born with scissors. But she runs to the local pub and an angry mob follow her to Adderson's laboratory and set it and his house ablaze.Just before they arrive, Dr Murton (Arnold Marlé), who delivered the baby, saves her by giving her to a sympathetic local shepherd (Stevenson Lang) to watch her for the night. Murton doesn't know that Adderson was killed by a snakebite as his lab burned and believes that Adderson will return for the child in the morning. Murton then leaves Bellingham for an extended period of research in Africa.
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