Margaret's father, a clergyman, has long harbored doubts about the doctrines of the Church of England and resigns his position rather than attest to orthodox beliefs as his bishop requires. To avoid gossip, the family move to the (fictional) industrial town of Milton, Darkshire, in the north of England. Thanks to his friend, Mr. Bell (Brian Protheroe), Mr. Hale is able to find a house. Giving lessons as a private tutor provides him a modest income. One of his pupils is local mill-owner John Thornton (Richard Armitage), who gets off to a bad start with Margaret when she witnesses him beating a worker whom he has caught smoking in the mill, which endangers all the workers. Gradually, Margaret gets used to Thornton, but his mother Hannah (Sinéad Cusack) and sister Fanny (Jo Joyner) disapprove of her, believing her haughty and alien to the customs of the North. In the meantime, Margaret attempts to do charitable work among the mill workers and comes into contact with Nicholas Higgins (Brendan Coyle) and his daughter, Bessy (Anna Maxwell Martin), who suffers from byssinosis from exposure to the cotton fibres in the mills. When Bessy became ill at Hamper's Mill, her father moved her to Marlborough Mills, Thornton's mill, because the working environment is better there. In a meeting with fellow mill owners, Thornton says he had a wheel for ventilation installed in all of the rooms of his factory in order to maintain a healthier workforce, despite the fact that it costs a great deal of money. The other industrialists had refused to install a wheel because of the expense.