At a work house, where the poor are housed and fed by the Parish, an old man has a fit, and tells the tale of how his wife had died the previous Christmas of starvation. He had gone to the parish house asking for bread, and they told him they would feed him and his wife, but they would be separated according to the law.
It's based on and uses as its text a poem by George Robert Sims in 1877, decrying the Poor Laws of 1834. It was enormously popular. The movie, starring Fred Paul as the old man, looks overacted and stagey, but it is certainly effective.