Cohen’s Fire Sale (1907)

A policeman has breakfast with his wife and children, and then prepares for the day's work. While on his beat, he finds and helps a lost child. Later, several officers try to save a woman who has attempted to drown herself. And there are some even more hazardous situations yet to come.

Propped upon the tail-end of a match, a housefly performs astonishing feats, alternately juggling a series of objects - a blade of grass, a cork, a miniature dumbbell… Most extraordinary of all is the sequence in which the fly spins a ball twice its own size, while a second fly perches on top. In the final sequence, the fly repeats some of its earlier tricks while apparently seated on a tiny chair.

Apparently inspired by the antics of Harry Houdini, Slippery Jim opens in the office of a police commissioner to whom a rather cocky villain is presented. The commissioner orders the prisoner to be clapped in irons, but this proves to be easier said than done because our anti-hero - presumably the Slippery Jim of the title - proves to be an expert escapologist.