Ribald Classic: English Music-Hall Ballads
August, 1976
If you were a young buck of the 1830s---a guardsman, a barrister, a medical student or even a peer---after the theater, you might end the evening at the Cider Cellars in Maiden Lane or the Fielding's Head near Convent Garden. Along with your deviled turkey and punch, you would get entertainment in the form of bawdy ballads roared out by a singer accompanied on a battered piano. It might be Oh, Miss Tabitha Ticklecock! or Peggy and the Ball Cock or The Essence of Lanky-Doodle or My Woman Is a Rum...
