In these modern times women have choices. They can marry, have a career, raise a family and if problems arise from deprivation or physical abuse, a network of help is ready to support them. So perhaps it is difficult to imagine the true plight of an unsophisticated, naive, sixteen year old girl, just two days away from her seventeenth birthday, in London, in the year 1909. Having left school early in order to nurse her invalid mother, until the poor woman's eventual death from heart failure, she now, upon the sudden demise of her father, finds herself completely alone, with no living relatives to turn to, no employment and no income. What will she do when the rent man comes knocking on the door?