In the late 18th century, as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace, changing the way in which men would work, and how their bosses would live, there followed a migration from rural areas into the towns and cities of England. Urban areas grew, but the centres saw an increased pressure in terms of space, with more and more housing needed to accommodate these new migrants, seeking to make their fortunes in the dark, satanic mills and factories of industrial England.

One way in which these workers were accommodated was in cheap, rapidly constructed housing, built by speculators and developers with little regard for safety. Foundations were skimped on or omitted altogether, and the houses themselves were constructed quickly in order to house people as soon as possible. Older houses were subdivided or even pulled down to rebuild several homes on the site, something that is familiar to anyone today who has seen large detached homes demolished and blocks of flats or a terrace of small box homes constructed in their place. As time went on, further measures were needed. In Manchester, as Engels notably explored in the 1840s, labouring class families ended up living in cellars, in dank, dark accommodation that was not meant for this purpose. Families bundled up together, with little regard for personal space; there was no privacy, and little more hygiene. Disease was rife, and mortality high.

In Birmingham and other urban cities, such as Leeds, Bradford and Manchester, another form of housing took shape to accommodate this new, industrial population. In Birmingham, back-to-backs were being built from the start of the 19th century, and although we associate them with Victorian England, some – such as the ones at Inge Street and Hurst Street – actually were being built in the Regency era. The back-to-back house was what it said on the tin: rows of houses with another row backing on to them directly, so that the back wall of one house was also the back wall of the one behind it. Therefore, all the windows were at the front of the house, and it would be darker at the back. These houses formed ‘courts’, with the ‘back’ houses facing onto each other across this court, or yard. There were communal wash-houses and privies; the wash-houses had to be subject to a routine or timetable, so that each resident knew what day she was supposed to do her washing and not get in her neighbours’ way (although arguments could erupt if one neighbour decided to take too long, or get the days wrong). The privies were not cleaned out enough, andThe last remaining Birmingham back-to-backs are now a tourist attraction in the city could be places that residents feared to have to get to at night, across a darkened court.

Those who lived in the courts of back-to-back housing worked, but their salaries tended towards the low side, and frequently both husband and wife worked, and their children too, either in formal jobs or at home, helping out their parents. Women often undertook piece-work that could be done from home, in which case, they might get their children to work alongside them. In Birmingham, many women worked as steel pen makers or, if not making the pens, then the nibs for them.

They might also be dressmakers, or pin makers, while their husbands might be gun barrel makers or filers, Birmingham being a centre of the gun-making industry. Yet it was also known as the city of a thousand trades, and the men and women who lived in the back-to-backs had a wide range of jobs.

In 1881, one row of back-to-back houses in Hockley, Birmingham, was home to an iron moulder, a Venetian blind maker, a warehouseman, a brass founder, tin worker, brass dresser and a bedstead polisher. The last two were Walter Terry and his wife, Caroline. Fifteen-year-old daughter Rose polished bedsteads with her mother, while 12-year-old John was already working as a brass founder. They lived in a court behind a row of houses on New Summer Street with three more children, aged between one and seven; their parents must have been keen for them to also get to a working age and to help contributing to the family economy. In 1901, Walter Terry had fallen on hard times; Caroline had died back in 1893, and he was now working as a hawker, lodging in a house on Summer Lane – the front half of a back-to-back. Ten years later, he was further reduced in circumstances, and had been admitted to the Birmingham workhouse.

Another family living in the Birmingham back-to-backs, the Lawrences, illustrated both the 19th century migration of rural dwellers into the city, and also how dreams of making it in urban Britain could sometimes end up as nightmares. Robert Lawrence was born not in Birmingham, unlike Walter Terry, but in Plymouth, in 1833. His father, originally from Mevagissey in Cornwall, made sails for fishing boats, but died when Robert and his brother John were little. His mother, Mary, also originally from Cornwall, was an invalid, unable to work much, and reliant on her children.

Robert was apprenticed to a relative in Exeter when in his teens, as a patten and clog maker. He lodged with his employer, John Toms, and the Toms family, but was overly impressed with what he saw as their relative wealth. One night, he gave into temptation, stealing a trunk of clothing – mainly underwear – from John Tom’s wife, Mary Ann. He was caught, and convicted of theft, serving a short sentence in prison. Understandably, on his release, Robert decided he needed a new start. Soon followed by his brother John, he made the long journey north to Birmingham, where he started a new career – as a clog maker. In Robert’s case, these were not the clogs we associate with the Netherlands, but practical footwear designed for heavy duty work either in agriculture or mine work.

In Birmingham, Robert met another émigré – Anna Maria Harry, from the mining town of Redruth in Cornwall. She had also lost her father young; he was a tin miner, a job with a notoriously short lifespan. Annie, as she was known, tried to get work as a servant, but there was too much competition in the local area, and she found herself unemployed. In her early 20s, she too had migrated to Birmingham in search of work. She and Robert did not have the money to marry, and so lived together, as a surprising number of working class couples did. They would have several children, and only married when their eldest daughter did, perhaps feeling that they really should be wed at this point.

Both Robert and Annie’s jobs were insecure, and did not net them a high wage. Although they started off their lives together in an ordinary terraced house, in middle age they found themselves in a back-to-back house Adams Street, Aston. They had lost four of their children in childhood, but there were still another five to support; in addition, Robert was working in a field that was on borrowed time. Clogs were going out of fashion, and he increasingly struggled to make a living. Their children had to work early, as many did; one daughter became a steel pen maker, another a milliner, and a third a dressmaker. Their eldest son worked as a servant before becoming a clog maker like his father.

Meanwhile, in the wider world, it was becoming increasingly recognised that back-to-back housing was not ideal, with its close confines, shared facilities and lack of air. In Manchester, no more back-to-backs were built after 1844, but it was really in only 1875 that the death knell was sounded for this accommodation in Birmingham, when the Public Health Act was passed. Although the odd row continued to be built in outlying parts of the city, of the back-to-back was ending.

So too were Robert and Annie Lawrence’s lives. In 1891, they both died, on the same day, within a few hours of each other. Living in a confined space, at 2 House, 15 Court, Adam Street, with little fresh air, sharing an already small space with the widowed boarder they needed to help pay the rent, they both developed lung problems and died – reaching their fifties was perhaps quite an achievement for a couple living in this area at this time. Their children and grandchildren continued to struggle to make their own livings, and it was only in the 1930s that their descendants were able to move out of the increasingly condemned back-to-backs and into new housing in the suburbs. In the mid 1960s, the surviving back-to-backs were declared unfit for habitation, and residents had to move.

Most of the city’s back-to-back housing was therefore demolished by the 1970s, but the remaining example in Inge Street was Grade II listed in the 1980s, in recognition of its place in our social history, and in 2004, the National Trust opened the row to the public. It now runs guided tours of rooms recreated to represent how they would have looked in different decades and centuries, and for different residents. It is a very popular tourist destination, perhaps showing how we seek to learn about how our ordinary ancestors lived – the ancestors many of us had – just as much as we visit the National Trust’s grander properties, to see how other people’s ancestors lived.