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Knocked 'Em in the Old Kent Road


"Wot Cher! Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road" is a British music hall comedy song written in 1891 by the actor and singer Albert Chevalier. The score was by his brother and manager Charles Ingle. Chevalier developed a stage persona as the archetypal Cockney and was a celebrated variety artist, with the nickname of "The Singing Costermonger". When first performed it was known simply as "Wot Cher!" The song describes the sudden endowment of apparent wealth on a poor family.

The song's verse is in a minor key, and then the chorus moves into the relative major .

It was sung by Shirley Temple in the 1939 film A Little Princess.

The song is full of working class cockney rhyming slang and idiomatic phrasing.

The song tells the story of a family who live in an alley, a passageway off the street usually lined with crowded tenements, near the Old Kent Road, one of the poorest districts in London. They are visited by a toff , a well dressed man, who must have been a gentleman because he took his topper (tophat) off in the presence of the narrator's missus (wife). The man's speech however betrays that he is lower class himself when he informs the lady that her uncle Tom has 'popped off' , slang for died. He must have looked odd in his appearance too because he is described as a 'geezer' which is an eccentric old man. He says this is not a 'sell' i.e. it's the truth not a story but she has been left a little donkey 'shay' (a chaise, a small light horse-drawn carriage).


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