I'd be interested in your friend Will, provided I don't have to dig him up!
I think you mean a Victorian sense of decorum...Elizabethans seemed to be willing to say or sing anything, and write it down as well. (See Sir Walter Enjoying his Damsel or Celia Learning on the Spinet or When ere my Dame a Hedging Goes)
'Fraid my access to seaport pubs is limited to San Francisco. Haven't heard it there (yet). Maybe I will have to make up verses.