Slumming It

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Visitors to the United Kingdom can experience a slice of slum lifealbeit a gentrified onewith the opening of the Birmingham Back to Backs museum and holiday cottages, tel: (44-121) 753 7757.

Back-to-backs are workers' houses, so named because of the way they back on to each other in a densely packed huddle. Once synonymous with overcrowding, poor sanitation and disease, they were built in the thousands during the 19th century.

Today, a single court of back-to-back housing is all that remains in Birminghamone of just a handful left in the U.K. Now owned by...

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