The Secret History of My Family: Season 1, Episode 4

1 - 4: The Nelsons and Margaret Marchant

The story of an Edwardian family locked in benefit dependency, and of a mother, accused of a shocking crime against her own child. Did the welfare given to Susan Nelson's family provide her descendants with the chance to move up in life?

More than a hundred years on, some of Susan's descendants remain trapped in patterns of benefit dependency – while others have freed their families from the grinding poverty of their ancestor. But was it government welfare or hard graft that liberated them from their past?