Episode list

1833;- Workers at the Quarry Bank cotton mill - many of them young orphans from the work-house - rise early for a long day. Over-looker Crout neglects his duty to sexually molest apprentice Miriam, leading to young Tommy losing a hand in the machinery. Hannah, the kindly, abolitionist wife of mill-owner Samuel Greg, nurses the boy back to health but her husband is more concerned that this will reflect badly when the parish commission arrives to look into working conditions. Spirited Esther Price reports Crout to them but he talks his way out of it. Meanwhile engineer Daniel Bate is released from debtors' prison to build a power loom for the Gregs' son Robert and immediately attacks John Doherty, an agitator for shorter working hours, which is being considered by parliament. Daniel impresses Esther with his concerns for safety and rescues her from Crout's lustful attentions. However she steals one of his spanners to sabotage the bell which signals the start of the working day and is found out.

Esther appears in court for assaulting Crout but proves that she was defending herself against his sexual advances and is charged only with taking the clapper from the bell. On return to the mill Robert sacks Crout, who reveals that Robert's younger brother William impregnated apprentice Susannah. Robert agrees to look after her and her child providing she keeps the paternity a secret. Supervisor Timperley brings the Garner sisters from the Liverpool work-house but the younger girl is deemed too sickly to work and has to be returned. Timperley lets her escape - rather than repay the work-house its fee - but she dies. Esther befriends Lucy, the elder girl, as a fellow Liverpudlian and seeks her help in finding her birth certificate to prove that she is seventeen, not fifteen, and nearer to freedom from her indentures and they plan to run away. Whilst Daniel makes Tommy an artificial hand Hannah takes the boy, whom she refuses to give back to the workhouse, to an anti-slavery meeting but John Docherty accuses her of hypocrisy since her husband has inherited a slave plantation in Dominica. She beseeches Samuel to free the slaves and is shocked when he tells her that they pick the cotton for the mill. John visits Daniel, offering a truce after Daniel's assault on him for letting Daniel's poorly father, who was in the Dochertys' care, die whilst Daniel was in prison.

Esther and Lucy steal Timperley's horse and cart and reach the Liverpool work-house, only to find that Catherine was not returned. They suspect that Timperley killed her but Timperley follows and brings Lucy back to the mill. Esther eludes him and tries in vain to find her birth certificate but eventually she too is captured and, back at Quarry Bank, her hair is shaved and she is locked in a cell but rescued by Hannah, who accuses Robert of brutality. Timperley's callous, over-weight wife drops dead whilst climbing the stairs to the cell and the apprentices roar with laughter at the undertakers' clumsy attempt to remove her body. Robert discovers that Daniel is pro-Union but retains him as he needs his skill. After Daniel has completed Tommy's artificial hand he is given permission by Hannah to date Susannah, taking her to a meeting addressed by John Docherty in pursuit of a shorter working day, which now seems likely. Aware of her pregnancy Daniel asks Susannah to marry him and she accepts. However Robert Greg will only allow it if Daniel signs a paper swearing that he will not join a union - which he does.

In response to Esther's investigations in Liverpool her sister Martha arrives at the mill. Timperley tells her Esther has run off but Tommy tells her the truth and she goes to see John Doherty. Samuel Greg dies at much the same time as the bill to shorten the working day is defeated. Robert gives the newly married Daniel a half share of the new loom's patent profits as a wedding present but Daniel sees it as a bribe and destroys the money. He and Susannah defy Robert by going to a Sunday meeting addressed by John. The workers are locked up to prevent their attendance but they escape and convince Hannah that Timperley was responsible for Catherine's death, after which she has him arrested. They carry on to the meeting, where Esther and Martha are reunited and Esther is given her birth certificate, revealing her true age. Rather than have John reveal his cruelty to Esther in a news pamphlet Robert agrees to let the workers join a union and to improve working conditions though the reduction of the working day is still some years in the future.