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• The number of houses in Britain doubled between 1800 and 1851

• Houses were built very cheaply and as quickly as possible.

• Landlords only wanted high rents and didn't care about living conditions or inhabitants.

• Little thought was given to drainage, sewage, water supply or pavements on the street.

• Local councils had little power.

• No building regulations - it wasn't landlord's responsibility.

BACK TO BACK HOUSING (TERRACES)

• Houses were built back to back because (a) it was cheap and (b) many houses could be placed in one area

• Very common in towns in the Midlands and the North of England.

• There were over 7,000 built in Nottingham.

• Not many left now, but there are still a few in Leeds and other industrial cities.

COURT HOUSING

• Most back to back houses were built as courts, housing on 3 sides facing a courtyard, with one access to the main street.

• Entrances were sometimes very narrow.

• High demand for housing = built on any plot of land which a builder or landlord could buy.

• Whole terraces of back to back housing were built in the gardens of older properties.

TENNEMENTS

• Five or six storeys high to get more people crammed in.

• Height of buildings makes ventilation problems worse.

• People would buy houses and rent them out again.

• They had little and very poor up-keeping and were in appalling condition.

• Landlords were not legally bound to keep houses in good repair.

CELLARS

• Even cellars were used in courts and tenements. People lived in them despite appalling conditions.

• There was much overcrowding in cellars.

• The poorest of the poor lived in cellars.

• The worst city for cellar dwellings was Liverpool. In 1840 there were 40,000 people living in cellars in Liverpool alone.

• They had no ventilation, rarely had a window, were damp and infested