This article looks at private outside space – understood as gardens or yards today – in five English towns across the nineteenth century. The history of the ordinary English back garden is a neglected one, and this article provides a quantitative backbone to the very first study of this kind. It is generally assumed that urban gardens were only provided in the last quarter of the nineteenth century for the middle classes, and the first quarter of the twentieth century for ‘the masses’. The article reveals that, in fact, private outside spaces – whether yards, gardens, or shared plots – were provided for all classes from as early as the first quarter of the nineteenth century. It also suggests that a Victorian theory of disease prevention lay behind the creation of the back garden as we know it today.