Following my visit to the back-to-Backs in Birmingham, I started to think about Patrick’s accommodation in both Dewsbury and Brighton either side of the First World War.
In 1911, Patrick, following eight years’ service in the Army, was living at 20 Elmwood St, Dewsbury. He shared the house with his widowed sister Mary Muldoon and her son William. (The story of the death of her husband is told in ‘The missing Muldoons’.) They lived in two rooms. 
The map shows that Elmwood Street, and all the surrounding roads, consisted of ‘high density housing’ to use a modern term. In others words, they were back-to-backs. The houses appear to be about 14 or 15 foot wide. It is difficult to be sure. All of these houses have been demolished. The street layouts have been completely changed.
The houses in Grantham Road, Brighton were, and are, far more substantial. They still exist. They are described as Victorian villas. Almost all of them have been extended. Some, as in the 1920s, have been divided into flats. In the instances where the complete house remains as a single dwelling, prices are now (mid 2025) over £800,000. It is a desirable part of the city. (It became a city in 2001.)
As covered in ‘The Irish Pimpernel’, I have been unable to find Patrick on the 1921 census. His wife, Edith, and young son, William, are living with her parents (Thomas and Charity Delves) at 42 Grantham Road. This is one of the many houses that have now been extended, both outwards (into the garden) and upwards (with an attic conversion). I assume that Patrick was living there but was somewhere else on the night of the census.
In 1921, there were just two families living there. The Delves family (five adults, or six with Patrick, plus baby William) occupied the upper part of the house. A family of four occupied the basement flat. Recent data shows that the basement flat has an area of 549 square feet. Whilst this is small (by most standards) it is roughly twice the size of the Elmwood Street property in Dewsbury.
Patrick has gone up in the world in terms of accommodation. But in 1911 he was healthy. In 1921 he was in receipt of a disability pension due to his war service. A fair trade?