Matchbox Girls

Ginny is a mother first and foremost to two girls Sarah-Ann and Cynthia. Her house, a one room slum in the midst of east-end London, also supports her sisters family too. Selina, who is heavily pregnant, her husband Sebastian, a dock worker and her three children, Edward, Lottie and Beatrice.

Virginia, Selina and Sarah-Ann work locally at the Bryant and May matchbox factory in Bow. A notorious line of work with unusual and highly painful health risks, predominately 'Phossy Jaw' and who's employees consist of 95% women. Brutally supervised by Harland Beazley the women of the matchbox factory are scrupulously controlled to the point of fear. One step out of line, a matchbox dropped, the wrong or not footwear would see a worker fined half a days wage. To make ends meat Ginny involves Edward, Lottie and Beatrice in the matchbox making process at her home.

But when a newspaper reports on the working conditions for the women at the factory, Ginny spots an opportunity and realises a deep embedded ambition to fight the powers that be. Ginny is faced with crippling fines and fears her eldest daughter may be falling foul of the common lines, 'Phossy'. Ginny fights against the male dominated society the only way she can, secretly in liaison with the newspaper.