The quietness

Fifteen-year-old Queenie escapes from the squalid slums of nineteenth-century London and becomes a maid for the respectable Waters sisters but soon realises that something is very wrong with the dozens of silent babies being 'adopted' into the household. Meanwhile, sixteen-year-old Ellen falls in love with her cousin Jacob, but when he betrays her, she is once again at the mercy of her cold-hearted father.