I learned an "Old Mother Lee" version very similar to the Spinners one above, dated 1970s and apparently learned at school by Tony Davis's sister, in September 1958 from an 11 year old boy called Derek Hastings at Peckham Manor School in S London where I taught.

I published my version in Notes & Queries [Oxford University Press] for March 1966, under title "Murder With A Penknife, a children's song", in which I related it to Child #14, "Babylon; or The Banks Of Fordie", as, my informant, instead of singing 'forty police' as in the Spinners' version, distinctly sang 'the Fordie police'; and because 'The Cruel Mother' and 'Babylon' are the two Child ballads in which a penknife, as distinct from any other sort of implement, is persistently specified as the murder weapon. Any good library will have a set of N&Q in which my arguments, which on rereading I still stand by, can be found fully expounded.