The East End of London, Victorian London 1884. The crowded tenements, the poor standard of living, the disease, the crime and the vice are all inhabitants of this darkest of places, yet people here are not insular nor vying to be better than their neighbour’s. This is an environment where everyone looks out for one another, where despite poverty, friendship is the watchword and this is the world in which twelve-year-old Alice Kettle sweeps her street crossing, keeping it clean for people to cross the road without the detritus of Victorian traffic fouling their person. A job she does to earn pennies to help support her mother’s family through these hard times.
Alice however is an unsuspecting target for that most foul of purveyors of human flesh, the purchasers of young girls who take them from their homes and then force them to work in the brothels which are mostly frequented by the moneyed classes.
Charlie Atkin has Alice in his sights and he soon sets his devious plan into action in order to make a pretty penny from the appropriation of Alice. This occurring despite the efforts of the Social Sisters movement to change the laws on the current age of consent and prostitution in general.A book that follows Alice through the trials that await her as her life is suddenly turned on her head. Will she escape her fate?