I was watching the 1870s episode, and thought, that's my family!
My mother's father was born in 1870. His dad was a publican who lost his job, and the family had to move to Otley.
The father died aged forty, and the mother had been a seamstress, so bought a shop buying and selling new and second hand clothes.
My grandad was one of eight children. He was apprenticed as a tailor and worked for his mum,in the same shop, along with two of his sisters until he was over fifty, when he married my grandmother. My grandmother made it a stipulation of the wedding that she was not going to live above the shop with his sisters!
On my mother's mother's side there was a cabinet maker who lived next to Hull docks where the timber yards were. His sons had to get work in the timber yards.
Not that they lived in slums, just the programme made me think of the work that they did.
I am expecting the 1880s programme to feature the workhouse, as that's where another of my relatives lived and worked in the 1880s, as a teacher.