Amateur whitewasher, The

AKA Slap dab
Handy man
First Published 1896
Writer/composer Fred Murray, Fred Leigh Roud RN1754

Music Hall Performers Frank Seeley
Folk performances Source Singers
New Arkansas Travellers, USA; 1927
Poacher, Cyril England ; Suffolk; 1972		 

From monologues.co.uk
I’m a very handy man
To save a bit ‘oof’s my plan
One day last week I said to my wife
Our yard wants a wash upon my life
So I’ll go and do the job
And I did so help me bob
Made a pail of whitewash, set to work
And the old girl helped me like a Turk.

Slap-dab! Slap-dab! Up and down the brickwork
Slap-dab! All daylong
In and out the corners
Round the Johnny Horners
We were a pair of fair clean goners
Slap-dab! Slap with the whitewash brush
Talk about a fancy ball
But I put more whitewash on the old woman
Than I did upon the garden wall.

The missus, I must now confess
She put me in her old nightdress
Her nightcap, too, she made me wear
She was dressed like me, so we looked a pair
She held up the pail so high
And I made that whitewash fly
Every now and then I heard a squall
I was taking the old girl’s face for the wall.

Feeling very dry just here
We went to get a drop of beer
And the kids from the house next door, I think
Attracted by the whitewash, came and had a drink
There’s got to be an inquest now
And I am in a dreadful row
I have done with economical schemes
For every night in all my dreams.

A British Music Hall song which perhaps unexpectedly turns up on an American “Hillbilly” record in the 1920s. It appears in the NEHI 3 CD Box Set My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean – see the entry for Tickle-ickle-um. It was also fondly remembered on this side of the Atlantic.

Later singers may have learn it from the singing of George Lamb – it appeared on his 1962 Folkways LP of London Music Hall and Pub songs She was poor but she was honest.

The original music hall song was written by Fred Murray and Fred Leigh and performed by Frank Seeley, who was advertised as “causing a sensation with the song” in Halls across London in the summer of 1896 (The Era May- Aug 1896).

Frank Seeley (b?-1913), performed for some time as part of a double act with Blossom Seeley as “Seeley and West“. He performed regularly on the London stage between 1895 and 1913, often billed as an “eccentric comedian”. His best remembered songs are Clap Hands, Daddy’s Come Home and Let Go Eliza! More on research on Seeley is needed…

Update: I have just come across this review of Seeley performing at The Bedford in 1905 – such was Seeley’s popularity amongst the young people of Camden that they organised lookalike competitions!

24 Jun 1905, The Era p21

The Harbour Lights Trio in 2019:

The New Arkansas Travellers in 1927:

Sources: