Thomas Hudson (1791-1844) was an important early songwriter and performer, singing in the tavern concert rooms and supper clubs that evolved into Music Halls. He started his working life as a grocer but became a prodigious writer, performer and publisher of songs. He managed the famous “OP and PS” theatrical Tavern in Covent Garden, and frequently appeared at the Cyder Cellars. Harold Scott, historian of the early Halls, sees Hudson as a transitional figure, writing songs which still bears traces of highfalutin hedonistic 18th-century style, but pointing towards later Music Hall:
[there are] certain links with [Pleasure] garden songs, there being a considerable trace of the Bacchanalian note of the 18th century, but added to these characteristics may be perceived the signs of change. These consist of development towards a purely domestic source of humour – a reliance on the commonplace and intimate occurrences of everyday life.
Harold Scott: The Early Doors
The Era published this obituary in 1844:
Thomas Hudson published 13 collections of comic songs starting in 1818. These were later bound together into a single book which is sometimes mistakenly given the publication date of 1818. In fact the collections were published at intervals between 1818 and around 1832.
These are the songs by Thomas Hudson which seem to have entered traditional singing:
- Barney Brallaghan’s courtship (9592)
- Betsey Baker (1288)
- Cork Leg, The (4376)
- Cutting toenails on a Sunday (21207)
- Dash my Vig! (23464)
- Ding dong (22833)
- Dog’s meat man, The (7515)
- Follow the drum (1076 )
- Good old days of Adam and Eve, The (7836)
- I don’t mean to tell you her name (1271)
- I never say nothing to nobody (1680)
- Jack Robinson (1794)
- Love in a hay band/Richard Short’s history (22802)
- Old oak table, The (13802)
- Roger and Dolly (1592)
- Spider and the fly, The (13006)
- Three flies, The (1290)
- To be sure (12615)
- Two wenches at once (1318)
Last Updated on April 14, 2022 by John Baxter | Published: February 9, 2021
