Steve Gardham wrote (31 Dec 18 - 06:32 AM):-
" I sang 'The Little Shirt me mother made for me' which I learnt as a child from my grandmother. It definitely was not out of place and went down well."

I learned that song from my father - and much against my will because I thought it a ridiculous little ditty but he sang it so often around the house that a young brain could not help but learn it.
I never heard it again until I started to record the 'Sussex Singers Evenings' that we arranged at our folk club in Lewes, the evenings where we gave the whole evening over to the surviving old traditional singers of the county. George Spicer sung it in a set of three songs that also included The Barley Mow. On another occasion George Belton sing it in the same set of three songs that included his lovely Bold Fisherman. I still did not like the song but I was fascinated by the fact that words varied between the three versions, Spicer located the song in Brighton, Belton had an extra verse that neither Spicer nor my dad had and dad's words were slightly removed from the other two. The three tunes were related but a good way from identical. I researched to find that the song was written by Harry Wincott, an English songwriter, born Alfred James Walden and it was first recorded in 1907 - seven years before my dad was born. All three versions varied from the written original. By this time my dad was dead but I was able to ask both Georges separately where they had learned the song and if they knew who had written it. Their answers were very similar - no idea who wrote it, it was just one of the songs that was sung in pub sing-songs and they had picked it up from older singers without anything being written down.
As theories emerged that emphasised the transmission process of songs rather than their origin this was of great interest to me because this was what I was hearing from the old singers that I was mixing with in Sussex and not just with this song.
Other compositions by Harry Wincott included included The Old Dun Cow and Mademoiselle from Armentières and we all know how widely popular these and others of his became in all sorts of contexts.

Steve Gardham wrote (31 Dec 18 - 05:20 AM)
"East London has a very strong tradition of its own, but being part of the Metropolis it was always very welcoming of any new trends in music so its tradition is made up of many popular songs which became very much a part of that tradition. How that fed into the folk revival was down to people like John Foreman, Martin Winsor and Redd Sullivan, and more latterly Cosmotheka. Some here would claim none of this is folksong, but don't forget your own roots and be proud of them."

Our folk club in Lewes always had a very strong bent towards the tradition but all the artists that you mention were booked there over the decades, John Foreman many times and the approach, enthusiasm and delivery of their material was well received by our regular crowd of tradition enthusiasts. One of our regular very popular floor singers was Jim Ward, a man with an encyclopedic knowledge of traditional jazz, the music hall and of the tradition in Sussex. He is a great purveyor of these old songs an particularly the monologues.
Ken Hall & Peta Webb would sometimes come down from London to our club - either as guest singers or for the 'Bob Copper Annual Birthday Parties'. They would bring other singers with them - even organising a minibus. One who particularly fascinated me was Terry Vosper - born and still living at the time in Whitechapel who epitomised that East London strong singing tradition that you mention.