The Shaw Family in Liverpool

Liverpool, 1848. Meg Shaw is the middle child of eight siblings, not quite old enough to bring in a wage to help her struggling family, but not young enough to be a babe to be cared for. When the family realise they can't feed all the children, Meg makes a choice. She volunteers to go to the workhouse for one season, and she'll take her little sister, Rosie, with her. As long as they are together, they can make it through. But the moment they enter the workhouse, Meg and Rosie are separated.

Liverpool, 1847. At seventeen, Delilah Shaw is the eldest of the eight Shaw siblings, and the one who must take charge when her mother and brother die in a tragic manner, and her father is left disabled in an accident at the docks. Taking care of the cooking, cleaning, washing and childcare is hard enough, but when they can no longer afford to live in the family home, Delilah must make the heartbreaking choice to leave it and to take two of her younger sisters to the workhouse.

Annie Shaw longs to be taken seriously. At 14, she's fed up of being babied by her big sister Delilah. It's true that Delilah has been the closest thing to a mother that Annie or any of her siblings have ever known, but she's secretive about the past and won't let her little sister out of her sight. When Annie's old friend Clara visits with tales of the good money that can be made at the cotton mill outside Ormskirk, she sees her chance at adventure and runs away. The work is gruelling and Annie is shocked to witness children as young as eight working long days around dangerous machinery.

When Jemima Jenkins's beloved Pa passes away leaving her orphaned, she is cruelly thrown out of her lodgings and dismissed from her cherished job as a schoolmistress. Offered a temporary home with her best friend Betty, Jemima is determined to avoid the workhouse and get back on her feet, even daring to hope about one day opening her own school for poor children. But when she uncovers a mysterious letter, revealing shocking revelations about her past, Jemima's plans are cast into doubt.