When Selina Lark’s grandfather dies, her Aunt Connie and Uncle Ted inherit his music shop and convert it into a café, The Singing Kettle, in a most ruthless manner. Selina is forced to slave in the café.
In 1925, Syd and Maud Weston force their niece Meg to fake being a Magic Robot. Meg goes along with the fraud because she thinks her uncle is sending money to pay for her brother Tommy’s treatment at a clinic in Switzerland. But the truth is that Uncle Syd is pocketing the money and Tommy is in the care of an old woman in the vicinity.
In Victorian Times, rich girl Dinah Warren is thrown into the workhouse when she is suddenly orphaned and her heartless guardians refuse to look after her. Then Dinah is put to work in a coal mine. Things keep going wrong for Dinah, which make her unpopular with the other children and earn her the nickname “Detestable Dinah”.
Louisa “Goldilocks” Marshfield, the daughter of wealthy parents, is carried off with pauper children by mistake to slave in a cotton mill. She escapes with Tim and Annie Barr, but the road back to her home in London is a hard and dangerous one.
In 1900, Val Matthews was sent to Dr Croome’s Academy, after her father, Brigadier Matthews had been killed and her mother went to South Africa to settle his affairs. The school was run by the nasty Dr. Croome and three other teachers. Val found herself without friends in the Upper School.
Susan Boyd worked as a dressmaker for Mrs Leach, who owned a dress stall in the local market and ran a squalid workhouse in a slum house, where several other homeless children worked and lived like slaves. When Susan tries to smuggle out a message for help, Mrs Leach punishes her by locking her in a dark cupboard. Following this, Susan pretends she has broken and starts acting as compliant toady to Mrs Leach, but she is using this to secretly help the slaves.
