The Ice Monster by David Walliams

One bleak winter night, in the backstreets of London, a tiny baby was left on the steps of an orphanage. There was no note, no name, no clue as to who this little person was. Just the potato sack in which she was wrapped. A snow fell around her.

In Victorian times, it was not uncommon for new born babies to be abandoned outside orphanages, hospitals or even the homes of upper-class folk. Their poor desperate mothers hoped their children would be taken in and given a better life than their birth families could provide. However, it was hard to imagine a worse start in life for this baby than at Wormly Hall, home for unwanted children.

Twenty-six orphans lived there. All crammed into a room that should have slept eight at the absolute most. The children were locked up, starved and beaten. On top of that, they were forced to work day and night. They had to assemble gentlemen’s pocket watches from tiny pieces until they went blind.