Emma is born in the area of St Giles known as Seven Dials, the point at which different streets meet at a central circle. St Giles is situated to the west of Bloomsbury and the north of Tottenham Court Road and is one of the most filthy, run down and poverty stricken area of London.

Her family of nine children and two adults live in just one room of Perkins Buildings, a former builder's yard which is crumbling and delapidated.

She is sent out to work at the age of ten to a number of badly paid charring jobs, until she meets Charlie Bateman, a costermonger, and joins him working in the busy street market in Seven Dials. 

Emma moves with her family to Mitcham in Surrey, where she finds work cutting lavender in the fields to the north of Mitcham.

She becomes the mistress of the landowner Mark Rivers, but having given birth at the young age of 17 sends Emma into a downward mental spiral and she runs away. First joining a family of fairground gypsies and then falling into prostitution, she finds herself in Bedford workhouse where she encounters Dr Edward White, one of her former clients.

He enslaves her at the workhouse but she manages to escape and finds her way back to Seven Dials where she asks Charlie Bateman for help.

He also seeks to control her so she flees and makes her way back to Mitcham where she is finally reunited with her son.