She became a regular contributor to Household Words and All the Year Round under Charles Dickens's editorship, after her sister had successfully submitted a story of hers without her knowledge.

"[6] The book gave rise to a genre of waif literature, stories about homeless children "that successfully combined elements of the sensational novel and the religious tract and helped introduce the image of the poor, urban child into the Victorian social conscious.

Jessica is a homeless girl in Victorian London, abandoned by an alcoholic actress mother, but who finds comfort and religious support in a friendship with Daniel Standring, owner of a coffee stall.

[9] Her experience of working with slum children in Manchester in the 1860s gave her books a greater sense of authenticity, for they "drive home the abject state of the poor with almost brutal force.

Sarah died after a long illness at home at Ivycroft on Ham Common, to which she moved in 1890, on 8 October 1911, surviving her sister by only eight months.