The Secret History of My Family

The story of three pickpocketing sisters raised in 1830s Shoreditch, in the heart of London's criminal underworld, and how two of them were banished to England's 'thief colony.' Among the girls' Australian descendants are two Supreme Court judges and a government premiere, and the descendants of the sister left behind in England are a bin man and a window cleaner.

The true story of two Victorian mothers, Lavinia and Florence, from opposite ends of the social scale - brought together by domestic violence. One was desperate to feed her six children in 1880s London, the other came from a lavish country home and ventured into the slums to try to help a fellow mother.

Press hysteria and public panic gripped 1890s Salford as it erupted into postcode violence. Rival gangs of youths, known as scuttlers, clashed in pitched street battles. Magistrate Joseph Makinson attempted to stamp out the epidemic of gang warfare by giving the scuttlers a taste of their own medicine.

The story of an Edwardian family trapped in welfare dependency and a mother accused of a shocking crime against her own child. Did the handouts given to Susan Nelson's family by a prosperous charity visitor provide her descendants with the chance to move up in life or was it all down to their own hard graft?