WANDSWORTH COMMON

THE MUSICAL

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Jack Cooper's Song

(After ""Pretty Little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green")

Nick Pruce



(Click on image to enlarge)

"Jack Cooper's Song" is to be sung to the tune of "Pretty Little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green" (Harry Clifton 1860s).

Original lyrics here.

Various performances online e.g. Nigel Leach singing Polly Perkins at Hoxton Hall for the Aba Daba Company, and recordings of Archie Harradine (c1950?) and Derek B. Scott (c.1985.

Jack Cooper was the pugilist husband of the famous "Gypsy Beauty" Charlotte Cooper, who lived most of her life on or near Wandsworth Common. In later life she is said to have earned most of her meagre living "dukkering" — telling fortunes.

Jack Cooper's Song.

I'm an iron-fisted milling cove, the fighting Romany

Smashed West Country Dick and married Charlotte Lee

I bought her silks and satins and the best scarlet cloth

I made her my lawful wife and plighted my troth.



I should have stayed with Charlotte but I met Jezebel

For the theft of a snuffbox I was transported to hell

Charlotte went out a-dukkering, my lawyer to pay

But I was sent to Australia, to Botany Bay.



I heard she lived a single life and waited for her Jack

I wrote to her from Australia and said I'd come back

She waited and waited — a tatchie romadie

Hair black as a crow's wing, my own Charlotte Lee.