ITV - Secrets from the Workhouse (2013) Part 2 A new Beginning

In Victorian society the workhouse represented the underbelly of society, where anyone who was poor, homeless, unemployed or ill was sent to live. With no benefits system in place, destitute people were either left to starve on the streets or forced to submit themselves to the harsh conditions of the workhouse where they worked ten hours a day doing menial tasks such as breaking rocks up or picking apart ropes.

Part 2: A New Beginning

Brian Cox, Barbara Taylor Bradford and Felicity Kendal discover more about how their relatives eventually escaped the workhouse system. Brian's great uncle was separated from his father, taken out of the poorhouse and sent to a foster family a hundred miles away in Ayrshire. Although Barbara's grandmother did get married, her aunts and uncles found themselves destitute once more and they were taken into the custody of Dr Barnardo's and sent to Australia under a government backed scheme. Felicity Kendal learns that her great grandmother's illegitimate child was forcibly taken into the care of the workhouse, but years later became a decorated war hero and successful farmer in Australia.

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