All Seasons

Season 1

  • S01E01 The Gadbury Sisters

    • March 10, 2016
    • BBC Two

    In this episode, there is 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 theft colony.

  • S01E02 The Manleys and the Hunts

    • March 17, 2016
    • BBC Two

    In this episode, the true story of two Victorian mothers, Lavinia and Florence, from opposite ends of the social scale, both bought together by domestic violence.

  • S01E03 The Salford Scuttlers

    • March 24, 2016
    • BBC Two

    In the 1890s Salford erupted into postcode violence after heavy press hysteria and public panic. In this episode descendants of the gang warfare group called Scuttling, give their family stories, and ask whether violence is still part of life in working class Salford.

  • S01E04 The Nelsons & Margaret Marchant

    • March 31, 2016
    • BBC Two

    The story of an Edwardian family locked in benefit dependency, and of a mother, accused of a shocking crime against her own child. Did the welfare given to Susan Nelson's family provide her descendants with the chance to move up in life? More than a hundred years on, some of Susan's descendants remain trapped in patterns of benefit dependency – while others have freed their families from the grinding poverty of their ancestor. But was it government welfare or hard graft that liberated them from their past?