Nick Dow wrote: In fact Kidson did spend time in Leeds. He lived there, how ever his informant Charles Lolley who later became his collaborator was a successful business man in his own right, in the building trade. Mr. Holgate was an importer of cloth, and both men had a vast repertoire of traditional folk songs, gleaned on their travels. They were both middle class men.

That's just it. You can search the Roud Index by where a song was collected, and I tried both Manchester and Leeds before I wrote my comment on that -- and, yes, there are, in all, hundreds of songs from those two cities. But they're mostly the Same Old Stuff. Peter Kennedy had a collection of "Songs of Occupations" -- but, again, Same Old Stuff. A few are about industrial occupations ("The Hot Ash-Pelt" is pretty specific!). But they aren't songs used in the occupations; they are simply songs which mention the occupations, or tell stories about them. And, even so, they are the minority of the songs from those places. Most of the songs collected in industrial areas are songs that are widespread -- sometimes slightly adapted to local conditions, but probably not originating there. There wasn't much collection in the factories -- and probably couldn't be, because the managers of such places weren't going to let outsiders in to see the horrid conditions!