A drama based on the novel by Charles Dickens which tells the story of Arthur Clennam who is thrown into a debtor's prison. There he meets a young seamstress whose father has been imprisoned for twenty-five years. A film in originally released in two parts.

Beginning in 1861 England, and moving through a number of years, a maid helps raise two children, a boy and a girl, all the time talking about her methods in doing so.