Jim Carrol 13 Dec 17 - 04:07 AM "The fact that English worker dialect poets like Ridley, Samuel Lackock, "Joseph Skipsey, John Axon and Samuel Bamford could continue to create the masterpieces they did without caricaturing their class as the broadside products did ..."

Jim Carrol 09 Jan 18 - 01:07 PM "Tanahill wasn't a broadside writer - he was a weaver-poet, as was Bamnford, Axon, Lackock and all the others mentioned previously as examples of working men producing poems of working life based on their own experiences"

Assuming the spelling 'Samuel Lackock' is a typo from Jim we have:

George Milner, introduction to second edition of "The collected Writings of Samuel Laycock", 1908. During the Cotton Famine "week by week they were published in the local papers and large numbers were issued as broad-sheet ballads. Many of these were learnt by heart and sung by lads and lasses in the streets of the town"

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Laycock "Laycock was one of the thousands unemployed and tried to earn a meagre living by writing verses which the unemployed could set to music and sing in the streets for pennies."

Though Milner's account suggests that he did not compose them "primarily for payment" but rather that "Deeply moved by the acute suffering which surrounded him on every side, the spirit was kindled within him, and he beganto write his Famine Songs" (precedes the quote above)