Watching the programme, there were some uncomfortable parallels within our modern society that I drew on. Work was on a temporary basis, much like our present ‘zero-hour contracts’, and for many able to work, including the children, it was a daily slog to find cash to pay off the rent and other hiking debts. Slum dwellers were often exploited by businesses through low wages, mother’s worked from home on irregular income as they juggled caring for their hungry children in cold, damp conditions. 

“We’re in debt before we do anything,” retorts one of the re-enacted slum dwellers, as he desperately struggles to find work whilst ailing a bad back, before the rent is due at the end of the week. It was a sentence that sounded particularly familiar to today’s climate, as we witness the mounting student debt crisis, the mass inequality in the developed world which still exists today and the rising number of Food Banks whom even the employed are forced to visit. Seeing a single mother’s plight to pay rent and food as the sole earner was a distinct reminder of my own past circumstance, where I existed to just work and provide. 

Being self-employed and the only earner, work is on a temporary basis and although I am fortunate enough to have skills and opportunities that pay well, there is always a worry that there will be no work, as is often the case. I recall still working in front of my computer through labour pains, then returning to work three days after having an emergency caesarian section. Or more recently, when I fell very ill with Graves Disease where not working was not an option. However the mental exhaustion eventually took its toll and work suffered. Having a thyroidectomy eventually mended me although I was back to work a week later, flying out to Dubai on another contract job, concealing a healing gash across my throat with a scarf. 

I became self-employed to get the Work/Life balance that we so often hear about in the workplace but the reality is that I work through breaks, eating with one hand, tapping on the keyboard with the other, fuelling up on caffeine to keep me going and regularly working into the evening. The daughter is often neglected and palmed off with an iPad to avoid disturbing me. Work/Life balance feels like an illusion.     

Are my own working conditions drastically better than our Victorian poor, where health and safety is neglected, where I face the same insecurities of temporary work? And what of the masses of ‘slaves’ working on zero-hour contracts and poor pay, often found in call-centres and distribution warehouses, clocking in and out, having their toilet breaks timed?